Super Bowl 2024 live updates as Chiefs and 49ers prepare for today’s show down

Early in the second quarter, San Francisco 49ers kicker Jake Moody hit a 55-yard field goal, setting what was briefly the record for the longest field goal in Super Bowl history.

It was brief because midway through the third quarter, Harrison Butker broke Moody’s record, hitting his own 57-yard field goal to cut the Niners lead to 10-6. 

It was a slow start to the biggest football game of the year. 

The San Francisco 49ers were able to secure a 10-3 lead against the Kansas City Chiefs going into halftime.

Neither team scored in the first quarter but the Niners got an early 3-0 lead in the second quarter on a 55-yard field goal from kicker Jake Moody, followed by a touchdown thanks to a trick play.

Shortly before halftime the Chiefs got on the board following a 28-yard Harrison Butker field goal. 

Below are standout moments from the first half of SuperBowl LVIII:

Ahead of what might have been the biggest performance of Usher’s career, news broke that Usher and his longtime girlfriend, Jennifer Goicoechea, filed for a marriage license last week, Entertainment Tonight reported.

The couple filed in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Feb. 8, days before Usher headlined the Super Bowl LVIII halftime show, amounting to quite a week for the veteran R&B superstar. 

Usher and Goicoechea were first photographed together in 2016 and confirmed their relationship in 2019, Entertainment tonight reported.

Sunday’s Super Bowl has so far been a low-scoring affair. The San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs came out of halftime of Super Bowl LVIII with the Niners leading by a score of 10-3. 

Here are the highest- and lowest-scoring Super Bowl games in NFL history:

The highest-scoring Super Bowl of all time was Super Bowl XXIX in 1995. The 49ers beat the San Diego Chargers, 49-26, for a total of 75 points. 

The lowest-scoring Super Bowl of all time was Super Bowl LIII in 2019. Just 16 total points were scored between the Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams. The Patriots won, 13-3.  

Read more here.   

Usher gave Las Vegas a stellar Super Bowl halftime show with several special guests. 

Alicia Keys joined the singer, starting off with her hit “If I Ain’t Got You” before they launched into their 2004 duet “My Boo.” 

H.E.R also joined Usher to play a guitar solo on his smash hit, “Burn,” as well as on “Bad Girl.”

Usher appeared in roller skates as he performed his chart topper “OMG” with will.i.am. 

Lil Jon later hit the stage for a performance of “Turn Down for What,” and “Yeah!” alongside rapper Ludacris. 

When Usher performs in the halftime show of the Super Bowl, arguably one of the globe’s biggest stages, the eight-time Grammy winner won’t be taking home one of the world’s biggest paychecks.

In fact, he’ll follow other major performers in earning less than the price of admission — if anything at all.

Usher will be getting paid union scale, a minimum guaranteed in a union contract, according to published reports.

Assuming the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union’s most recent contract applies, that would translate to about $1,000 a day, per People Magazine.

The NFL not only has a solid track record of never paying performers, it has gone as far as to try to charge artists for the chance to bask in the limelight of a Super Bowl audience. The NFL in 2015 solicited fees to perform from Rihanna, Coldplay and Katy Perry, who in the end rejected the notion. 

Perry agreed to perform but not to pay for the opportunity, telling Forbes: “I want to be able to say I played the Super Bowl based on my talents and my merit, thank you very much.” 

Read more here. 

Looking for some tasty food ideas for your Super Bowl party? James Beard Award-winning Chef Andrew Zimmern has some easy-to-make recipes.

They include Pork & Black Bean Chili, Disappearing Buffalo Chicken Dip, Carla Hall’s Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos Ham and Cheese Croquettes and the Quaker Millionaire’s Bar.

Zimmern is one of the hosts of Taste of the NFL, an event that marries the worlds of football and fine dining for a cause, gathering NFL legends and top-tier chefs to tackle hunger and benefit national nonprofit GENYOUth.

 Get the full recipes here.

From CBS News’ Samantha Kulok

Just before halftime, the struggling Chiefs scored their first points of Super Bowl LVIII thanks to a 28-yard Harrison Butker field goal. They go into the half trailing the San Francisco 49ers 10-3. 

The 49ers have increased their lead to 10-0 thanks to a trick play that caught the Chiefs completely off guard. 

With under five minutes to play in the second quarter, Niners quarterback Brock Purdy pitched the ball back to wide receiver Jauan Jennings, who then threw it across the field to Christian McCaffrey. 

McCaffrey than sprinted 21 yards for the score. 

Jennings is the first wide receiver to throw a touchdown pass in the Super Bowl since Antwaan Randle El did it in Super Bowl XL  in 2006 for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who defeated the Seattle Seahawks 21-10. 

San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw was carted off the field after sustaining a fluke non-contact injury as he had started to run onto the field in the second quarter.

Video taken from behind the 49ers’ sideline showed Greenlaw bouncing in place before heading onto the field after a San Francisco punt. After taking a step or two, he collapsed onto the field in obvious pain.

Read more here.

Win or lose Sunday, San Francisco 49rs linebackers coach Johnny Holland is cherishing every moment.

“Sunday is a great day because it’s game day,” Holland told CBS News. “But, you know, I found out now that every day is a great day. It’s taught me a lot to see life in a different perspective.”

Five years ago, after feeling pain in his shoulder and ribs, Holland was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare and incurable blood cancer.

“Immediately, I started chemo treatment and went on every day, going to work every day and go get chemo once a week,” Holland said. “It probably took about six months to realize that, ‘this is pretty serious that you’re going through.'”

He’s now a part of a clinical trial at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center that’s testing new treatments.

“Patients living with myeloma live with a lot of uncertainty,” said Samantha Shenoy, a nurse practitioner who is coaching Holland through every visit. “He faces that uncertainty with a really positive attitude.”

Holland says football is his medicine, and he hopes his story inspires others to keep going and to keep fighting.

“So for me, to get in these trials is really extending my life,” Holland said. “I just want to be able to use, and be in a trial that hopefully helps other people.”

Read more here. 

The Niners took a 3-0 lead early in the second quarter on a 55-yard field goal from Niners kicker Jake Moody, the longest field goal in Super Bowl history.  

Usher is headlining the Super Bowl LVIII halftime show in Allegiant Stadium on Sunday.

“You know, everybody says they want to win a Grammy, or they want to win an Oscar, or a Tony, or an Emmy,” Usher told “CBS Sunday Morning” last weekend. “A Super Bowl is something that everybody wants to play. And here it is. It happened.”

Usher previously appeared at the Super Bowl as a guest during the Black Eyed Peas’ halftime show in 2011. 

He had a lengthy Las Vegas residency at the Park MGM which ended in December. 

“The moment I heard that they were entertaining the Super Bowl comin’ to Vegas, I was like, ‘I’m not leaving,'” Usher told “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King last week.

Jay-Z’s Roc Nation is helping to produce the halftime show. Usher said that Jay-Z gave him one piece of important advice. 

“He left it to me to, you know, make sure that I didn’t miss the culture. That’s the one thing that he said. ‘You know, we’re doing this for the culture,'” Usher told King. “‘I want you to play the ones that we — that we love, that we know you for. Give ’em the moments that they, you know, look forward to seeing,'” like, ‘Go for the culture.’ And I’m like, ‘All right, I got you.'”

Shaheem Sanchez will also perform an American Sign Language rendition of the halftime performance. The NFL has not yet said if any other artists will join Usher on stage.

“It’s gonna be a celebration,” Usher said. “I’m gonna try my hardest not to cry, break down and cry on the stage.”

Read more here. 

The Super Bowl means two things: football and food! But when some snacks sit out for a long time, they can become a safety hazard.

More than 100 million Americans are expected to throw or attend a Super Bowl party this year, and foodborne illness is no joke. It can cause digestive trouble or even lead to hospitalization or death. 

The best defense? A good offense.

“Keep your hot foods hot and your cold foods cold,” says Meredith Carothers, food safety specialist at the United States Department of Agriculture. “Your dips, you could put on an icebath. You can put meatballs or other things in a slow-cooker to keep them hot. That’ll help keep those foods at a safe temperature where bacteria can’t grow and multiply.”

Food can go foul faster than you think. The USDA says if you can’t control the temperature, there’s a 2-hour limit. After that, it needs to go back in the fridge or oven.

Read more here. 

The opening drive of the Super Bowl started out promisingly for the San Francisco 49ers, but ended disastrously when star running back Christian McCaffrey fumbled the ball in Chiefs territory. It was just McCaffrey’s third fumble of the 2023 season.

The Kansas City Chiefs have won the Super Bowl coin toss and elected to defer to the second half. 

The 49ers chose tails, which won them the toss in Super Bowl 54 when these two teams last faced off, but the Niners eventually lost the game 31-20.

One of the most improbable stories of Super Bowl LVIII is that of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, who has gone from being “Mr. Irrelevant,” as the final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft, to a bonafide star, leading his team to the cusp of an NFL title in less than two years.

The 24-year-old, who set records at Iowa State after receiving Player of the Year honors at Perry High School in Gilbert, Arizona, is attempting to become the third quarterback after Joe Montana and Steve Young to lead the 49ers to a Super Bowl victory, and the franchise’s sixth Lombardi Trophy.

Purdy’s salary cap hit of $889,000 for the 2023 season ranks 67th in the NFL among quarterbacks, and 1,406th among all players. A Super Bowl win would trigger a league-standard $164,000 bonus.

By comparison, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes holds an NFL-record 10-year deal worth $450 million and a salary cap hit that tops the league.

Read more here.

While all eyes were on Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl, she was not the only celebrity in Allegiant Stadium on Sunday as the San Francisco 49ers took on the Kansas City Chiefs.

Swift arrived at the game with Blake Lively and Ice Spice. Lively had attended a Chiefs game with Swift earlier in the season. 

Luke Combs and Jay-Z were in attendance. Jay-Z was on the field before kickoff along with his daughters Blue Ivy Carter and Rumi Carter. The rapper has attended the Super Bowl with Blue Ivy for years. The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir was also among those at the game.

Several actors were also at the game. Paul Rudd, wearing a Chiefs jersey, was at the Super Bowl with his son, Jack Rudd. “Modern Family” star Eric Stonestreet was also in attendance. Actor and comedian Keegan-Michael Key, and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, were also seen at the game.

LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal also joined fans at the game.

There are also big names performing at the Super Bowl; Post Malone, Reba McEntire and Andra Day were singing before the game kicks off. Usher will headline the halftime show.

Despite their status as defending champions, the Kansas City Chiefs are slight underdogs when they face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIIl.

The Niners first opened as 1.5-point favorites, according to most sportsbooks. The line has since shifted even more in their favor, with San Francisco settling in as consensus 2-point favorites hours before kickoff Sunday.

Playing as an underdog appears to suit Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes just fine. In his career, Mahomes has a stellar 10-1-1 record against the spread as an underdog, according to ESPN.

In Vegas, the moniker is the house always wins, and that also applies to the Super Bowl. According to the betting data site Covers, since 1991, Nevada sportsbooks have only lost money on the Super Bowl twice. The first instance occurred in 1995, when the Niners crushed the then-San Diego Chargers 49-26. The second famously occurred in 2008, when Eli Manning’s New York Giants upset Tom Brady’s heavily favored New England Patriots, thwarting their efforts to complete a perfect 19-0 season.

Country music icon Reba McEntire will sing the national anthem today before the Chiefs and Niners face off in Super Bowl LVIII.

The three-time Grammy winner has a special history with the song. McEntire was discovered as a singer 50 years ago at the 1974 National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma when she sang the national anthem, according to her website. She’s performed the national anthem at numerous events since then, but this will be her first Super Bowl performance.

Last month, McEntire gave “CBS Mornings” some insight into her preparations for a national anthem.

“You just warm up like you do a concert and sing it about five or six times, and get in there, and do it,” McEntire said.   

Post Malone, who is singing “America the Beautiful,” and Andra Day, singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” will also perform during the pregame.

Read more here. 

Nearly 68 million American adults — about 1 in 4 — plan to bet on this year’s Super Bowl, setting a record by a wide margin, according to the gambling industry’s national trade association.

Figures released last week by the American Gaming Association include bets placed with legal outlets, as well as with illegal bookies and online operations in other countries.

The volume of betting participation is projected to be 35% higher than last year, when the previous record was set.

Bettors plan to wager an estimated $23.1 billion on this year’s Super Bowl, up from $16 billion last year, the group predicted.

Of that, about $1.5 billion is projected to be bet with legal outlets, the group said, citing consensus estimates from various sources. That’s in the same ballpark as the $1.25 billion in legal bets projected by Irvine, California-based research firm Eilers & Krejcik Gaming.

Sports betting is legal in 38 states plus Washington, D.C.

Read more here. 

Ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl, football fans might be curious to know if there’s anyone with both a Super Bowl title and Olympic gold medal to their name.

Bob “Bullet Hayes” is the only man in history who meets both qualifications, according to a 2020 Olympics post. The former Olympic gold medal sprinter and Dallas Cowboys receiver was once deemed the fastest man alive. The NFL, in a 2015 ranking of the top 10 fastest players, placed Hayes second.

Hayes won two gold medals at the Tokyo 1964 Olympics. He was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys in the seventh round in 1964 as a futures selection. Hayes stayed with the Cowboys until 1974. 

He was with the Cowboys when they beat the Miami Dolphins 24-3 to win their first ever Super Bowl in 1972. 

In his first two seasons, he led the NFL in receiving touchdowns. Hayes was with the Cowboys when Dallas won the Super Bowl after the 1971 season. 

Hayes died of kidney failure in 2002. He was 59.

Sunday’s Super Bowl will serve as a major environmental milestone, with Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium being powered entirely by renewable energy — a first in the history of the event.

The Las Vegas Raiders, who call Allegiant Stadium home, entered into a 25-year agreement to buy power from a solar installation owned by NV Energy.

The seemingly desolate area of the Nevada desert is the source of the green energy used to power the game.

A vast solar farm with more than 621,000 panels has the capability to power close to 60,000 residential customers — or one very big stadium.

That also includes Usher’s halftime show.

“We have enough power for Usher and all of his lights and all the fanfare that’ll be there,” NV Energy CEO Doug Cannon said.

Read more here. 

Singer Andra Day will perform “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is widely known as the Black national anthem, at the start of the Super Bowl. 

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” has a short Super Bowl history, but the song itself has been around since 1900, when it was first performed by a choir of 500 schoolchildren in Jacksonville, Florida. It was written by James Weldon Johnson, who considered the piece a hymn.

Johnson, a renowned author, educator, lawyer and civil rights activist, set out to write a poem to commemorate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, and the piece became a song. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson, composed the music.

Calling the song the Black national anthem has led to some controversy. James Weldon Johnson Foundation president Rufus Jones, however, emphasized that “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was written and popularized decades before “The Star-Spangled Banner” became America’s national anthem in 1931.

“In Jim Crow America, when everything was ‘separate and equal,’ so to speak, Black folk found their own sources of inspiration,” Jones said. 

Read more here.

Last-minute tickets to the Super Bowl were going for as high as $37,000 on the ticket resale platform StubHub Sunday afternoon, and $30,000 on SeatGeek. StubHub told CBS News last week that the average price for a Super Bowl ticket was $8,600.

Ticketmaster, which serves as the NFL’s official ticket platform, showed the lowest price for tickets Sunday at $8,000.

Immediately after the conference championship games ended in late January, SeatGeek said that the average price of a Super Bowl ticket on its exchange was going for $12,082, the highest it has ever seen for a Super Bowl. 

Super Bowl ticket prices typically jump immediately after the conference championship games, which were played on Jan. 29, then fall as the game nears, according to SeatGeek.

The cheapest face-value Super Bowl tickets sold directly by the NFL last week were going for about $2,000. And that price is after fans, including season ticket holders, win the chance to fork over several grand to buy them via a lottery system.

As Mike Nowakowski, co-owner of Ticket King in Minneapolis, told CBS Minnesota, “The average Joe does not have a fighting chance of getting a ticket for face value.”

One of the foremost questions on everyone’s minds as kickoff neared was whether Taylor Swift would in fact grace Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her royal presence.

We now know the answer: Swift was seen arriving ahead of Super Bowl LVIII accompanied by her mother, good friend Blake Lively, and rapper Ice Spice, with whom Swift shared a Grammy nomination earlier this year. The singer sported an all-black ensemble with some silver sparkle — a red-and-white jacket was slung over her shoulder. 

Video also showed Swift in a suite hugging Jason Kelce and introducing him to Ice Spice. Another video showed her chatting with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. 

Swift’s private jet landed in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon, following her four Eras Tour concerts in Toyko, Japan, CBS Los Angeles reported.

With the 17-hour time difference between Japan’s capital and Vegas, it was 1 a.m. Vegas time when she took the stage in Tokyo. After her final song, Swift rushed to a private jet at Haneda Airport. She was able to land back in the U.S. with hours to spare before Sunday’s kickoff. 

The Super Bowl marks the year’s biggest day for advertising, with top brands paying millions to get their messages in front of a television audience that reliably attracts more than 100 million viewers.

Over the years, the cost of a 30-second advertisement has soared, making the Super Bowl the costliest advertising venue on TV.

This year’s crop of Super Bowl ads will feature dozens of top brands, from Anheuser-Busch’s iconic Clydesdales, to an Uber Eats’ spot featuring Jennifer Aniston and Victoria and David Beckham.

The cost of a 30-second ad this year is $7 million. That’s about on par with last year’s game, but represents a 55% jump from 2019. 

Read more here. 

Tens of millions of Americans are expected to place prop bets in Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“It’s gotten much, much bigger than even the game,” said Rufus Peabody, a professional bettor and co-founder of Unabated Sports, a betting resource company.

In football, prop betting consists of betting on anything other than the game’s final score. But why has it gotten so popular?

“I think because people have shorter attention spans than they used to,” Peabody speculates. “We want the game to be more like a slot machine than we do a sporting event.”

To that end, the public Sunday can bet on anything from how long the national anthem will be, to whether a kicker will miss an extra point.

Other prop bets include whether pop superstar Taylor Swift, girlfriend of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, will be caught on camera wearing a foam finger. And will she wear red lipstick or some other color?

And when the game ends, what shade of Gatorade will get dumped on the winning coach? 

And who stands to profit off all this aside from the Gatorade delivery guy? The Nevada sportsbooks. They’re expecting a record 67.8 million Americans to gamble $23.1 billion on the Super Bowl this year, according to a survey from the American Gaming Association. Industry insiders estimate that roughly half that amount will be on prop bets. 

The Super Bowl presents major security challenges for local, state and federal authorities. Months before the players even take the field, more than 30 law enforcement agencies have been preparing for the supersized weekend in Las Vegas.

This week, CBS News flew with Customs and Border Protection and its acting commissioner, Troy Miller, on the same route the agency’s pilots will fly on Sunday from 2,000 feet above the Las Vegas Strip.

“We have a 10-mile radius where we’re ensuring that (air) traffic’s not coming into this site,” Miller told CBS News.

Douglas Murray, director of CBP Air and Marine Operations, has been flying with the agency for over 15 years and directs a team of pilots.

“So we’re always looking for, obviously, for the smaller aircraft, we’re basically doing crowd control, threat assessment,” Murray said.

CBP scans every vehicle that goes into Allegiant Stadium’s parking lot, using the same technology it deploys at the border.

“If we see something anomalous, we turn it over to our state and local partners, who are bringing their bomb dogs to further adjudicate,” Miller said.

And while CBP watches the low altitudes, the U.S. Air Force patrols the skies at 25,000 feet.

Meanwhile, inside the stadium, the NFL has been hard at work with game and security preparations, covering safety from every angle.

“The more technologically savvy we become: look around the stadium, the scoreboards, the lighting, you know, all of the different technology that makes this a spectacular game, these are all increases in the attack surface that people can target,” said Cathy Lanier, the NFL’s chief security officer.

Lanier and her team may be the only ones with their eyes not on the field Sunday.  

“You know, ideally for me, people come in here and they feel security, but they feel security and they feel comfortable,” Lanier said. “Like it’s not overwhelming, it’s not overbearing. It’s, ‘I feel safe. I feel like I can come here and really relax and watch the game.'”

The Kansas City Chiefs will look to become the first back-to-back Super Bowl champion in two decades when they take on the San Francisco 49ers today in Las Vegas.

Super Bowl LVIII is a rematch of Super Bowl LIV in 2020, when the Chiefs and star quarterback Patrick Mahomes beat the Niners 31-20 to bring Kansas City its first Super Bowl in a half-century.  

The two head coaches who patrolled the sidelines four years ago are still at the helm, but their teams come into Sunday with vastly different narratives. Chiefs coach Andy Reid has a 3-0 record against the Niners’ Kyle Shanahan — who has earned a reputation as a quality regular season coach who struggles with game management in the playoffs. 

If Shanahan is going to finally defeat Reid, he will need to find a way to slow down Mahomes and his favorite target, tight end Travis Kelce, the two of whom made history in the AFC title game against the Baltimore Ravens two weeks ago by connecting on their 16th postseason passing touchdown, the most ever playoff touchdowns by a quarterback-receiver duo.  

A win Sunday would give the Chiefs their third Super Bowl in five years, vaulting them into NFL dynasty status and putting Mahomes into rarified air as one of only three quarterbacks ever to win three Super Bowls before the age of 30, the other two being Tom Brady and Troy Aikman.

When asked this past week about the possibility of one day tying or surpassing Brady’s seven Super Bowl wins, the 28-year-old Mahomes deflected, saying he’s “a long ways away still.”

“I mean, I’m not even close to halfway, so I haven’t put a lot of thought into it,” Mahomes said. “I mean, your goal is to be the best player that you can be. I know I’m blessed to be around a lot of great players around me. And so, right now, it’s doing whatever I can to beat a great 49ers team and try to get that third ring. And then if you ask me that question in 15 years, and I’ll see if I can get close to seven.”

The Niners, whose quarterback Brock Purdy was famously 2022’s Mr. Irrelevant — the last pick of that draft — are hoping to finally end their 29-year Super Bowl drought and win their first title since 1995.

“I know a couple of the guys that got drafted before me,” the 24-year-old Purdy told reporters in Las Vegas. “But I’ve never held a grudge or anything. I’m a believer that God has a plan for everybody, and I fell last for a reason.”

The Chiefs reached the Super Bowl the hard way, with back-to-back road playoff wins against the Buffalo Bills in the divisional round and then the Ravens in the conference championship — the first time in his career Mahomes has been forced to play road playoff games.  

The Chiefs and Niners both feature top-five defenses, according to Pro Football Reference. While outside of Kelce, Mahomes’ supporting cast has been weak, Purdy has one of the most talented and explosive skill-position groups in recent memory with running back Christian McCaffrey, wide receivers Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk, and tight end George Kittle. 

But while the Niners earned a No. 1 seed and home-field advantage, they struggled mightily against seemingly inferior NFC competition in the playoffs despite their talent, barely eking out wins against the Green Bay Packers in the divisional round, and then the Detroit Lions in the NFC title game.

But maybe even bigger than the conversation surrounding what happens on the field Sunday will be the hype around football’s most famous couple, Kelce and pop superstar Taylor Swift.

Swift, who last weekend set a record with her fourth Album of the Year win at the Grammys, performed Saturday night in Tokyo as part of her Eras Tour, and fans had been hotly debating whether she would make it back to the U.S. in time to attend Sunday’s game. 

Thanks to a 17-hour time difference between Tokyo and Vegas, she made it back to the U.S. with plenty of time to spare, arriving in Los Angeles Saturday afternoon on a private jet.

With parking spots for private jets at Vegas-area airports completely booked months in advance for Super Bowl weekend, Swift was likely to be driven from L.A. to Vegas for the big game. 

Super Bowl LVIII will air on CBS and Nickelodeon and stream on Paramount+ on Feb. 11 from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Kickoff is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. ET.

Ticket prices to Sunday’s Super Bowl are unrivaled by any football game in history, going for more than $12,000 on some resale sites. 

It didn’t used to be this way. But in the last few years, ticket industry experts say, a series of business decisions made by the NFL for distributing the coveted tickets shot prices through the roof — far out of the reach of most fans.

That’s by design, according to Stephen Shapiro, associate chair of the University of South Carolina’s Department of Sport and Entertainment Management.

Some tickets are distributed to NFL teams, or sold at face value to players, coaches and others tied to the sport. Others are given to the league’s corporate sponsors and partners, such as CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global. (CBS is broadcasting the game; it will also air on Nickelodeon and stream on Paramount+.)  Then another batch of tickets goes to an events company founded by the NFL in 2010 called On Location Experiences.

“There isn’t typically a general public opportunity,” Shapiro said. “Teams will have tickets that they can sell to season ticket holders, but even that’s a lottery system. And then between sponsors and hospitality and other corporate partnerships, tickets are pretty much spoken for.”

Driving costs up further is the size of the venue this year. Attendance at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium is expected to be about 60,000 — among the smallest in Super Bowl history. By comparison, nearly 68,000 fans attended the 2023 game in Glendale, Arizona, and about 70,000 the year before, in Inglewood, California.

Read more here.

The team here at CBS News is watching along with the world and finding the best moments from online and the game. Here’s some of your team today and our predictions for tonight.

• Aliza Chasan, a digital content producer from New Jersey, is picking the Chiefs and thinks Jason Kelce, Travis’ brother, will go shirtless and jump through a table.
• S. Dev, a news editor from NYC, picks the Chiefs. He predicts Beyonce will announce a country album during a commercial and Janet Jackson will make a “much-deserved surprise” appearance.
• Gina Martinez, a digital content producer from Queens, says the Chiefs will win 24-17 and Usher will trip down the stairs during his performance, but he’ll fight through it and put on a great show.
• Joe Ruiz, the managing editor from San Antonio. Having lived in Kansas City for two years, I’m pulling for the Chiefs today, and I’m hoping to adopt one of the players in today’s Puppy Bowl.
• Maddie Shepherd, our director of SEO from Brooklyn, is going for the 49ers and believes Reba McEntire’s national anthem will be the shortest in Super Bowl history.