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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical analysis for shorts & longs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dlu who wrote (35901)	1/31/2002 6:07:42 PM
From: Johnny Canuck	Respond to of 69382

Marketers Cool on Mismatched Super Bowl Jan 31 3:55pm ET By Doug Young LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - It could rank as one of the biggest upsets in 36 years of Super Bowl play, but football oddsmakers and corporate marketers aren't putting their money on this year's big game. The problem is the New England Patriots, two-time Super Bowl losers and heavy underdogs in their showdown with the St. Louis Rams in New Orleans on Sunday. Just days before the game, advertising revenues for the U.S. TV broadcast were down from last year, with some spots still unsold. And Las Vegas sports books expected business to be only slightly better than levels for last year's low-voltage matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and New York Giants. "It's not the dream matchup," said Robert Walker, the race and sports book director for MGM Mirage , one of the Las Vegas Strip's biggest casino operators. "A dream matchup would have been, from our perspective, St. Louis against the Oakland Raiders." Indeed, the Patriots -- who have been to the big game twice before but never won -- didn't even qualify as Walker's No. 2 pick for American Football Conference champion. That choice, he said, would have been the Pittsburgh Steelers, who were upset by the Patriots last week in the AFC championship game. Walker said the current line on the game was the Rams by 14 points, a wider spread than either an Oakland or Pittsburgh matchup probably would have commanded. The last game so heavily mismatched was in 1997, when the Green Bay Packers were favored by 14 points over the same New England Patriots. Before that, San Diego was a 16-point underdog against the San Francisco 49ers in 1995. "The bottom line here is the Patriots are getting no respect," Walker said. He added he believes the total amount of money bet in Nevada on the game will probably exceed last year's total. But he also pointed out that last year's matchup was more a defensive battle, and featured the Cinderella team Baltimore Ravens playing the scrappy New York Giants -- neither a favorite to reach the game when the season began. BLOWOUT POTENTIAL Sentiment -- and fear -- that the game could turn into a blowout were also prevalent among advertisers, with several fourth-quarter commercials still yet to be sold as of Thursday, said Paul Shulman of Advanswers PHD, a buyer of TV commercial time for advertisers. A spokesman for Fox, which is televising this year's game, confirmed that two spots remained to be sold as of Thursday morning. He said both spots were in the second half, but added it was not unusual for air time to sell as late as Friday for the Sunday game. "I just don't think that New England has the same amount of fans across the country, and Oakland, based on their past successes, as well as Pittsburgh, has an awful lot of support throughout the U.S.," Shulman said. He added that the fact that unsold airtime was all in the second half was telling in and of itself. "It indicates to me that an awful lot of people are concerned the Super Bowl could be lopsided," he said. "And, if it is, you don't want to invest that kind of money in a game in which the attention level would be reduced when your commercial hits." Fox executives have confirmed that advertising rates will slip below the $2 million average for a 30-second spot for last year's contest, in the second year of declines in a row for the game. But, while enthusiasm among some is weak, others are still hopeful that New England can pull off its second playoff upset in a row, or at least make a better showing than its status as 14-point underdog might lead one to expect. "It's a tremendous matchup," said Chuck Esposito, assistant vice president of race and sports books operations at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. "You have the Rams against a Cinderella story, a David against Goliath."