The Billion Dollar Game: Behind-the-Scenes of the Greatest Day In American Sport - Super Bowl Sunday (Hardcover)

~ Allen St. John (Author)
Key Phrases: party team, homework time, fantasy ticket, Super Bowl, The Billion Dollar Game, Game Day (more...)

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Book Description
One hundred million spectators.
An economic footprint larger than the GDP of 25 nations.
Zero room for error.

An inside view of the 365 days leading up to the greatest event in American sport.

More Americans watch the Super Bowl than vote in presidential elections. Cities compete for the lucrative rights to host a game, and ad agencies, merchandisers, security personnel, and celebrity party planners quarterback their own teams starting a year in advance. Super Bowl Sunday is a national holiday for sports fans, who purchase 1.5 million large-screen TVs in the week before the game, attend one of 7.5 million parties, and eat more food than on any day other than Thanksgiving (according to the California Avocado Commission, Americans consume more than eight million pounds of guacamole on this single day).

In The Billion Dollar Game, New York Times bestselling author Allen St. John gets rare access to the people and corporations that mastermind this iconic event. He goes into the FOX Sports broadcast booth with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, and the longtime director/producer team of Artie Kempner and Richie Zyontz. St. John gets a front-row seat in the Madison Avenue conference rooms where the massive Anheuser-Busch campaign is being tested in focus groups, and he takes readers behind-the-scenes with stadium architect Peter Eisenman, and the billion-dollar deals brokered in Phoenix preceding Super Bowl XLII. Covering the political snafus, the organizational nightmares, and the well-oiled hype machine, St. John weaves a fascinating portrait of the National Football League and the Super Bowl--and examines how all the elements miraculously come together to create the biggest cultural phenomenon in American sport.

Amazon Exclusive: Allen St. John on The Billion Dollar Game

Why did I write a book about what goes on behind the scenes at the Super Bowl? Because no one had ever done it before.

My editor Jason Kaufman, who was also the editor of The Da Vinci Code, called me up one day to talk about our next book project and he wondered if I’d be interested in writing a book about the Super Bowl, not only as a sporting event, but as a cultural phenomenon and an economic engine, and even as an unofficial national holiday. I immediately recognized this as an amazing idea, and we were both shocked that no one had ever done it before.

Once I started writing, I understood why. This wasn’t an easy book to write. The Super Bowl is so enormous that all the stories could fill 10 books. I was lucky enough to find the very best stories--watching a world-class architect build a state-of-the-art stadium to host the game, the backstage preparations for the sizzling hot Playboy party, the controlled chaos in the FOX Sports television truck, that heart-stopping moment when they lost power only moment before Prince’s half-time show. Over more than a year of reporting the book, I got unprecedented access to the Super Bowl, and the people who make it run.

The result is a book packed with star-studded stories--and an amazing conclusion--that will thrill any sports fan. But The Billion Dollar Game is also a business book in the best sense of the term. The people who make the Super Bowl happen are all the very best at what they do, and from them can’t help but provide the kind of lessons that will help you handle those third-and-three moments in your life and your career. And, of course, watching all of this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and The Billion Dollar Game is my chance to share it. I hope you learn as much--and have as much fun--as I did.

(Photo © Jennifer May)

Review

“After reading The Billion Dollar Game, you speak the language of the Super Bowl in a different way. You start sliding out facts and anecdotes, behind-the-scenes nuggets about camera angles, stadium construction, halftime shows, party planning and guacamole consumption—all the really interesting stuff that the general sports fan never glimpses. You’ll want to thank Allen St. John for writing a terrific book.”
—Leigh Montville, New York Times bestselling author of The Big Bam and The Mysterious Montague

“If anyone knows how to write an inside account of a big-time American sporting event, it’s Allen St. John. The Billion Dollar Game is a riveting, fun, behind-the-scenes account . . . it shows you the Super Bowl like you’ve never seen it.”
—Christopher Russo, host of Mad Dog Unleashed and New York Times bestselling author of The Greatest Sports Arguments of All Time

“Illuminating….An insider’s look at a billion-dollar industry and a game that is much more than just a game.”
--Sports Illustrated

"St. John's narrative is laced with intimate portraits and fresh figures–did you know the resale value of a stadium's worth of tickets exceeds $500 million, or that Americans consume eight million pounds of guacamole on game day?–that enliven the organizational challenge of carrying off the world's biggest bash without a hitch."
--Time.com

“[Allen St. John] looks at the Super Bowl from a non-football perspective...how money weaves through all of it in making this a billion dollar event.”
--Dallas Morning News

“It’s an absorbing, thorough look at the people and corporations that make the game possible.”
--Tampa Bay Tribune Online


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (January 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385523548
• ISBN-13: 978-0385523547
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #457,948 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Distorted View of the Road to the Super Bowl, August 10, 2009

By	Mediaman "TVviewer" (USA) - See all my reviews

This incorrectly-titled book is written by a sportswriter who loves to hear himself "talk" on paper, giving inconsequential details instead of getting right to the point. So what is supposed to be the story of the year leading up to the 2008 Super Bowl ends up being a long-winded project that includes the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers, the building of the stadium in Arizona in the 1990s and behind-the-scenes business dealings that often have little interest to the average reader (much less almost nothing to do with the subject of the book).

The award-winning author takes himself very seriously as he feels the need to describe every detail, including about himself ("As I shoved my iBook and my commemorative seat cushion into my black Targus backpack, I spied the sparkly silver (security) band on the handle.") Why do we need to know he woke up at 7:57 a.m. on Super Bowl Sunday? His writing style screams an attempt to justify himself as a significant writer of a "big" book, one that will reveal things never put on paper before. But even though some of it is very interesting, you will often find yourself screaming at him: "Who cares?"

St. John does a poor job attempting to pin down the value of the Super Bowl. Never is it close to a billion dollars. At best it could be $300 million but academics who have studied it put it around $100 milion. There are those that even claim it has almost no impact in these tourist cities because all the Super Bowl does is shift money from other times of the year and makes people spend it in February.

Yet the author slams scholars, claiming they are biased. So what's the deal with the title of this book? It can only come if you go back decades to include a city's willingness to build a Super Bowl-quality stadium to attempt to attract the game, then wait for years before the event is awarded. Then add things like network costs and advertising time. But it's not a billion dollar game. Namely, this writer uses subjective measures to sell his own book with a misleading title.

He hypes the Super Bowl from the beginning, which ultimately feeds his need to hype this book. He claims it's a "billion-dollar economic engine that's bigger than the GDP of many nations" and "the world's biggest single-day sporting event." He repeats two times in three pages that it's an "unofficial national holiday" and "the world's biggest party." But never does he really justify any of that hype. The truth is that if 100 million people in the U.S. watch it, that means 200 million don't watch it! Instead he chooses individual stories that he was allowed access to--and those are very subjective stories so that an entire picture is not painted but rather certain portions of the canvas are colorful while other sections are ignored.

He even writes a chapter entitled "Believe the Hype," where he gives examples of other myths that shouldn't be believed (like there are a billion people watching or toilets all flush during Super Bowl commercials) but he insists on pushing his own hype throughout the book.

Much of the first portion of the book is boring and has nothing to do with the Super Bowl, focusing on the building of the Phoenix stadium. Then he repeatedly covers the parties, mostly the Playboy party (which really has little to do with the game--he just seems to want to brag that he's there). He also skips around so much that one expects he has ADHD, piecing together in a chapter different stories that don't seem to have much to do with each other because he hasn't explained enough to connect the dots. For example, there is a short NFL reference in the stadium building, but those unfamiliar with the details from years ago will not know what this guy is talking about--I reread that paragraph three times and still am unsure what he is saying.

Things improve for the dedicated sports reader later in the book as it gets closer to the playing of the game but even then it's less about the game and more about his experiences. There's also some background information on how the TV coverage is produced. But never does one get the sense that this is an all-encompassing work--St. John writes only about those he is given access to, and instead of building a compelling narrative that is focused on the big game, he has chosen to use a creative writing styles that is more appropriate for a fluff magazine piece.

At one point he notes that Joey Fatone is asked about Britney Spears in the pre-game coverage--to which the author writes, "What does this have to do with the Super Bowl?" I would ask the author the same question about much of this book, since it seems there's a lot that has little to do with the actual game.

4.0 out of 5 stars I am a sports marketing teacher and I use it in my class., September 24, 2009

By	Susan Lett (Cheyenne WY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This book helps kids who love sports learn how important marketing is in real life.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and informative look into Americana's greatest spectacle, January 31, 2009

By	Joseph C. Sweeney (Portland, Maine) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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A great idea for a book, pulled off nicely by author Allen St. John. I could have used a little less on the Playboy party (which has been cancelled for the 09 game) and more on the broadcast of the game. The director and producer for Fox were fascinating characters; very interesting stuff from St. John.

A thoroughly enjoyable book. Highly recommended for all sports fans!