Football..
Here in Ireland we mostly think of the round shaped ball, America thinks of another.
The US of A is still in recovery mode after their Super Bowl Sunday football fest with a very happy Seattle team leaving New York with the Vince Lombardi trophy in their clutches. But the Super Bowl isn’t just about Football. It’s about the world famous half time shows, with The Who, Prince, Aerosmith all performing in recent years. It was the turn of Bruno Mars this year, with special guests, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
The Super Bowl is also about the TV commercials that surround the games broadcast and the millions of dollars the corporations spend to have their product placement (About $4 million for a 30 second commercial!!) Roughly 100 Million people watch the game, cheer on teams, laugh, cry and miss messages.
Miss messages?? I’ll explain.
Out of 100 million people who saw SB48 and all it entails only 3.3 million have responded to U2’s offer of FREE music. That’s right, FREE!
U2 teamed up with Bank of America to herald the arrival of ‘Invisible‘, new music from our northside lads forthcoming album (due in about two months) and there was good to be done in downloading the track too. Because Bank of America gave away money with each download. Via iTunes the big bank types donated $1 to Bono’s ‘RED’ charity, the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and Malaria. At the time of writing downloads stood around the 3,138,470 point.
A 60-second segment of the video was shown during the Super Bowl last Sunday which saw over 1 million people download the track in one hour. Nice. But with a 100 million people watching is it disappointing?
As of now ‘Invisible’ is available to purchase on iTunes for €1.29 with all proceeds going to the Global Fund.
Bono himself pondered this week if the band’s music is still relevant in 2014.. Meanwhile every cent earned from their music IS relevant to fight Aids, TB and Malaria in countries less fortunate than ours.
Chat you on the radio!
Marty Miller – Radio Nova #MorningGlory 6am weekdays.
On twitter @MartyMtweets
