According to a recent USA Today poll, 80% of the nation will not watch Super Bowl XLVIII live on Sunday, instead opting to wait for the matchup between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks to hit Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes or another streaming service.
This represents a major shift from even just 12 months ago, when only 46% of Americans watched the game at a later date.
“Maybe Netflix will release all the Super Bowls at once, including this year’s,” said avid House of Cards fan and casual sports watcher Mike Benson. “That would be great. I could binge them all in two days.”
Added Benson: “No spoilers, please!”
While entertainment-bingers hope their friends keep a lid on the big game’s plot details, most major advertisers are scrambling to reach the “latent viewing audience.”
“People love Super Bowl commercials, but obviously there are no commercials on Netflix,” said an Anheuser-Busch spokesman. “So we’ve secured the rights to have both teams play the entire game holding Bud Light bottles. That way, when the game goes to streaming services, we still have good exposure even after the commercials are edited out. Sure, it may be annoying for the people that watch the game live, but who does that anymore?”
