Philanthropy and the Super Bowl!
One more sign that philanthropy is entering the mainstream of American popular culture is its intense involvement with this year’s Super Bowl.
Football is far and away the most popular subject in our public media. Thirty million viewers weekly, 53 million for the Conference championships, 111 million for last year’s Super Bowl-the largest television audience in history for a single event, a record expected to be broken on Sunday. Of course it is a sport made for television; many short bursts of high-energy action, punctuated by many places for commercials, designed for and aimed at its huge audiences, at great cost, providing unequaled revenue, driving players’ sky-high salaries, the star celebrity system, the other media attention-a system that is one of the greatest money-machines in history. Today’s highly paid professional athletes compare with hedge fund managers as an enormously wealthy, compact constituency with potential for philanthropy.
The NFL has played a leadership role in promoting philanthropy. On Sunday, watch its “Play 60″ bus commercial, which encourages kids to go to the program’s website where they can pledge personally, in writing, to devote 60 minutes every day to physical exercise. NFL players go into the nation’s schools all year long promoting the message with high impact on kids.
The New England Patriots stand out as a team and a franchise seriously devoted to philanthropy-thanks to their owners, the Bob and Myra Kraft family, and especially to the late Myra Kraft who was a prominent philanthropist. The Patriots Foundation has many conspicuous philanthropic programs. The Krafts expect every player on the Patriots team to be part of the Greater Boston and Massachusetts community; their contracts explicitly require them to take part in 10 charitable events per year, and Myra Kraft actively encouraged the players to form and develop philanthropic foundations. She made a point of getting to know all the players individually, and was in turn cherished by them. When she died of cancer last July, the team had “MFK” patches sewn prominently over their hearts on their uniforms, and dedicated the rest of their winning season to her memory, including this year’s Super Bowl game. Matt Light, who plays left tackle for the Patriots, has used his Light Foundation to sponsor a public raffle on the Internet, offering $2 chances (minimum of 5) to win two tickets to the game, all expenses paid-plane flight, hotel, restaurants, even taxes on the prize money, with $2,000 to spend on incidentals. He hopes by this innovative idea to gain $500,000 for charity, but many people predict he’ll do much better than that.
Of course this is Massachusetts, which has been working on strengthening its culture of philanthropy, and has a history of doing so through professional sports; the Boston Red Sox have for years sponsored The Jimmy Fund, raising many millions of dollars for cancer research. With this year’s Super Bowl however, the Patriots are raising the standard even higher, using their uniquely potent megaphone to reach the American public in greater numbers than ever before, promoting philanthropy.
George McCully is president of Catalogue for Philanthropy.
