Super Bowl 50 2016: Date, time, and everything you need to know

It is that time of the year again, which NFL fans worldwide cannot seem to wait for. American football’s biggest annual extravaganza, the Super Bowl 50 2016 is here!

Fans across the world are eagerly waiting for this much awaited mega show, which is the second most watched sporting event in the whole world, after EUFA Champions League finals.

Let us have a detailed look into the particulars of this mega event, the date and time you need to tune in to catch this blockbuster finale, as well as the rich history of this biggest of sporting spectacles.

Super Bowl 2016 Day Schedule- Venue, Timings, How to watch

The Super Bowl 50 will take place on the 7th of February, 2016. The finale is in the City of Santa Clara at the state-of-the-art Levi’s Stadium, which is the greenest and most technologically advanced professional football stadium in the United States.

The game starts at 6:30 p.m. E.T. on Sunday and would be televised in the U.S. by the CBS network.

If you don’t have a TV set with you, you can watch the event live on Apple TV or iPad, after downloading the free CBS Sports App. On a MacBook, you can use the CBS Sports Live Player to enjoy live coverage of the event.

If you are residing in the U.S., you can also watch it live online on cbssports.com.

However, if you are an NFL fan and are not staying in the US, it's much harder to see the game for free. As The New York Times has pointed out, international football fans will need to pay for access:

“International fans cannot stream the game without a subscription to N.F.L. Game Pass, a $99-a-year video service for watching football games, according to the N.F.L.”

The Super Bowl 50 will be contested between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Carolina Panthers and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Denver Broncos. Most NFL pundits have placed the Carolina Panthers as the favorite to win the title.

History of the Super Bowl 50

The game was created as part of a merger agreement between the NFL and its then-rival league, the American Football League (AFL). Super Bowl I was played on January 15, 1967, following the 1966 regular season.

Ever since then, the top teams from the two leagues, which were renamed NFC and AFC afterward, play for bragging rights in the annual Super Bowl event.

In 2015, Super Bowl XLIX smashed American TV records and became the most-watched American television program in history, with an average audience of 114.4 million viewers. It was the fifth time in six years the Super Bowl had set a record, starting with the 2010 Super Bowl, which itself had taken over the number-one spot for the most watched American TV program, held for 27 years by the final episode of M*A*S*H.

The day on which the Super Bowl is played is now seen as an unofficial American national holiday, and is called "Super Bowl Sunday". It is also the second-largest day for U.S. food consumption, after Thanksgiving Day.

Star performers at the Super Bowl 50

Every Super Bowl day, top international stars thrill the audiences with their performance and add a new dimension to the event.

This time, the Super Bowl night will begin with Lady Gaga, who will follow in the acclaimed footsteps of Beyoncé, Whitney Houston and the Backstreet Boys amongst many other top stars, who have performed the national anthem before the game.

Once the Super Bowl 50 gets underway, Coldplay will lead the halftime show. Past halftime show performers Beyoncé and Bruno Mars are expected to join Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion on the stage, and make it even grander and bigger.

Significance of the commercials surrounding the mega show

Apart from the competition between the top sides, there is a battle which is taking place between different brands through their ads on the Super Bowl day.

A lot of big organizations target the Super Bowl Day to come out with their most innovative and hard-hitting commercials to attract the massive audiences watching the game. Apart from being a big sporting event, Super Bowl is also the ultimate advertising battlefield for the brands.

This is because of the record TV and radio attendance the mega show generates every year, which means that if you hit the right notes with the public through your ad, you stand to profit in a big way.

In order to prepare for the game day, Marketing Land is keeping its own account of which big brands are in competition and what their plans are for the big day.

This year, a record price of 5 million dollars worth of 30-second air time will be paid by these big businesses to CBS. As of now, a total of more than 40 brands have come aboard and announced their plans to feature their advertisement during the Super Bowl 50.