This year, millions of Super Bowl viewers will for the first time be hit with commercials from cryptocurrency and online sports gambling, two emerging markets for people who love throwing cash at risky investments.
All of them will make the same promise: that you, yes you, are way smarter than those dummies not making fast, easy money.
These ads will air between quarters, between plays and whenever else the National Football League can squeeze them in as the Cincinnati Bengals square off against the Los Angeles Rams. The framing of these commercials will differ, but all of them will make the same promise: that you, yes you, are way smarter than those dummies not making fast, easy money. If even a fraction of the expected 100 million Super Bowl viewers opens their wallets in response, that’s potentially a fortune to be gained by these companies for likely little in return for the vast majority of would-be newly minted moguls.
In both industries, the companies involved require new users if they’re to grow. That hunt for fresh blood has at least two cryptocurrency exchanges and two online sportsbook companies forking over as much as $7 million per 30-second ad slot for this year’s championship game. In doing so, Crypto.com and FTX Trading Ltd. are hoping to rope in people who haven’t bought into the Bitcoin hype yet, Bloomberg News explained:
With Bitcoin now more than a decade old, cryptocurrencies may have exhausted their market for early adopters, R.A. Farrokhnia, a Columbia Business School professor, said. “For these companies who are providing some foundational services — primarily exchanges or those who let you create a wallet — in order to grow, they need more volume,” said Farrokhnia, who is also executive director of the university’s fintech initiative. “You have to convince consumers to start coming into this ecosystem.”
Luring new investors is also crucial considering that many of the major cryptocurrencies have plunged in value in the past few months. The Super Bowl ads are essentially a doubling down for the industry, as “$112.9 million has been spent on national crypto-related ads since the start of 2020,” Bloomberg News reported. Crypto.com alone has spent $65 million on its campaign featuring Matt Damon. Washington Post writer Sonia Rao perfectly summed up how freaking weird Damon’s pitch is when you stop to consider it:
His one-minute spot for Crypto.com, the company after which the Staples Center was renamed, frames investing in cryptocurrency as a holy crusade. Its YouTube description paints Web3 — the vague concept of a decentralized World Wide Web, based on the blockchain — as our inevitable future. “Fortune favors the brave,” the actor pronounces, tracing the proverb back to the ancient Romans. Damon is a storyteller by trade; his job, in many ways, is to sell ideas to the public. But many considered it ludicrous and unsettling for a man with such deep pockets to place himself on an even playing field with the average viewer — as he does while referring to historic figures as “mere mortals, just like you and me” — before encouraging them to direct their money toward what his grandiose calls for courage imply is a risky investment.
Damon isn’t alone among the celebrities working to convince average Americans to join them in the cool, fun, totally not a scam, world of crypto investing. Adding a glamorous appeal to what’s essentially speculation is crucial for the burgeoning currency market and adjacent industries like the trade in non-fungible tokens. NFT’s and cryptocurrency’s value increases only according to demand and perceived scarcity — and demand for an imaginary good has to come from somewhere. Hence Damon’s awkward shilling and Paris Hilton’s cringeworthy promo for a six-figure token connected to a rather hideous drawing of an ape. “Don’t get left behind,” they seem to say, “invest in tulips today and join your peers among the other wealthy geniuses of the world.”
Meanwhile, after decades of opposing gambling as a moral wrong that will bring down the noble sport of football, the NFL has had a real on the road to Damascus moment this season. Rather than a message from on high, though, the league has heard the siren call of a billion dollars in potential revenue for the league and its teams over the next decade. As a result, the NFL now has partnered with seven sportsbook companies, letting them place ads that run during games.
This conversion was made possible through a Supreme Court ruling three years ago that allowed states outside of Nevada to permit gambling on sports, leading to a surge in digital bookies. Sports betting is now legal in 30 states, and the digital betting markets have been busy offering what they’re essentially pitching as free money for first-time customers all season. If you’re in one of the major markets where gambling is newly legalized, such as New York, you’ve likely been absolutely bombarded with these “first hit’s free” appeals for months.
All of which leads us to the Super Bowl, a matchup where 18.2 million people are expected to place bets either online or in-person, per the American Gaming Association. That’s no chump change, and gambling companies want to make sure Americans keep that same energy through the offseason and into the fall. Both Caesars and DraftKings plan on running ads during the big game, according to Legal Sports Report. FanDuel also launched a new ad campaign last week ahead of kickoff but won’t air one during the game itself.
There’s something about this moment that feels eerily similar to the 2000 Super Bowl, when a slew of online companies bought ads for the first time. Riding high on the soon-to-pop dot-com bubble, the commercials those online companies ran were as much about flexing financial strength as they were about enticing new customers. That wasn’t a great allocation of resources for those 14 companies, only four of which are still currently active. The same fate could easily befall any of today’s crypto and gambling companies. Ironically enough, the investments in marketing we’re seeing are themselves a gamble with no guaranteed payout in the end. In both markets, massive amounts of revenue are being diverted to these efforts, which leaves me concerned for how desperate companies may become if even greater cash flows are needed to offset this spending spree. That money will need to come from the wallets of people who are drawn in to the most American of dreams: becoming wealthy overnight, having bet big at just the right moment. There are few protections for the multitude who lose out chasing this fiction they’re being sold, with a lack of strict regulations making it easy for these companies to siphon up millions of dollars virtually unchecked. Both crypto markets and sports gambling rely on more people losing out than striking it rich to survive. The only difference between the two is transparency: At least when betting on the Rams or Bengals, you’re told the odds of winning up-front.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW Daily. 
