More than 100 million Americans will watch this Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. Few know (or will even consider) the dozens of employees and countless manhours that make the nation’s most-watched television broadcast possible.
Among those helping produce the game for FOX is Sportradar, a leading sports data company and partner with most U.S. leagues and organizations. Sportradar helps its broadcast partners with the stats, figures, trends, and other analysis it presents during the game.
For Super Bowl LIX, that will include more than 25 pages of notes and insights that announcers Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady will use to inform millions of Americans Sunday evening.
Covers senior editor Ryan Butler talked with Sportradar content project manager Zach Robinow and FOX Sports broadcast associate Matt Gale about producing the game, how they present the data and the role legalized gambling has on the nation’s most wagered-upon annual sporting event.
Televised sporting events, and the Super Bowl in particular, have evolved tremendously in the past 59 years. How from your perspective has the role of sports data in broadcasting evolved?
ZR: It's come a long way in terms of what is available at our fingertips, how quickly we can get that, how far back we can go with that data.
If I look at a set of notes that I wrote back in 2018, compared to now, it's a lot more basic, a lot less interesting. Those are the kinds of things I would never include in a set of notes today, just because it's easy for anyone to access that information now. You have to dig deeper and deeper to create new stories.
In the past, I might have included in my notes something like, "the Chiefs had the best red zone scoring percentage this season," whereas now, that's just at the tip of your fingers. We're sending out automated reports to FOX that have that information, and they can find that in a second.
With so many stats available, how do you narrow down what will be used for the broadcast? Are there any particular themes or storylines you look for?
ZR: I think one of the biggest things is the Chiefs looking to become the first team of all time to win a third-straight Super Bowl. It’s pretty amazing that this is happening - while being broadcast (by Brady) for the first time. He may be the only other peer (to the Chiefs' Patrick Mahomes) on the Mount Rushmore of quarterbacks.
23 years ago today, @TomBrady made his Super Bowl debut in New Orleans. ⚜️
— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) February 3, 2025
This Sunday, he calls his first #SuperBowl from the booth—back where it all began.🐐🎙️ pic.twitter.com/YOwItu6bmY
And that is impossible to avoid. So many of the stats I provide, especially when Mahomes is involved, are tied to comparisons with Brady. He’s chasing Brady, or he’s the "first to do this" since Tom Brady, or "he did this better than Tom Brady."
I mean, those are really the only two in their class, and it’s pretty cool that Mahomes is going for this accomplishment.
How do these central themes of a Chiefs “threepeat” and Mahomes chasing Brady impact the FOX broadcast? Are you looking for these storylines as well?
MG: In our department, we try to tell the stories of the game using stats as a tool. We’ve got a video tape department, all the tape guys – they’re telling stories with pictures and video. We try to tell stories with stats.
A lot of times, we work backwards. We think about what the game’s story is about, and then we ask, "what stats can we use to help tell that story?"
Sometimes we have an idea, and then Zach and other researchers will help us find the stats to back it up. In our graphics department, we’ve got a couple operators building these graphics in-game, and we also build a bunch ahead of time as pre-builds.
We have a box operator who can slide stats off Zach’s. At the end we want to feel like we helped tell the story of the game.
What does this look like practically and technically for this year’s Super Bowl?
MG: In the last few Super Bowl cycles, we've debuted a new graphics package, and there’s a new look for this Super Bowl. There’s an effort to make sure it’s big, full, and simple – very readable.
With the score box we now constantly show stats. For example, on our FOX Box, the quarterback stats are always listed, and the passing yardage updates on screen. This allows viewers to see the quarterback stats constantly.
It’s always done bigger and better in Vegas. Yes even the SB and those who watched #58
— Chris Maathuis (@sports8) February 3, 2025
Chiefs and 49ers set an all-time high of 123.7 million viewers on CBS, according to Nielsen, up 7% over the previous year, which averaged a then-record 115.1 million on Fox. @CBSSports… pic.twitter.com/iFALOEyHj3
The quarterbacks are obviously the most important stats for a lot of people, so that's something I notice. When I watch other broadcasts that don’t have that, I find myself wondering "what’s the quarterback’s line?"
It’s subtle, but it’s there. We don’t put a lot of stats on full screen, but we always have something popping out of the box to help. Especially in a game like this, the lines are really important for people at home, whether it's the Over/Under or something else.
What is the action like in one of the trucks on Game Day?
MG: I wish everyone could sit in a production truck for a game. I still don’t think people realize how much goes on behind the scenes. You’re listening to the producer, director, announcers, and a guy upstairs calling the down and distance. It gets chaotic.
That’s why people love live production. There's no take-back. If you make a mistake, you can’t fix it. It’s intense, but that’s what makes it exciting.
This will be the seventh Super Bowl since single-game sports betting was permitted outside Nevada and the third in a legal sports betting state. How has the growth of legalized gambling changed the broadcast?"
ZR: I can’t speak too much for FOX’s perspective on gambling, but I know in the recent past, it was considered taboo. Now that’s changing. If you watch certain national broadcasts, or regional ones, gambling is becoming more integrated.
I know at Sportradar we’ve provided some gambling-focused content for other clients, and we’ll probably do more in the future. I also know that we’ve had graphics in the past – like one about the preseason odds for teams to reach the Super Bowl (that was displayed during the most recent NFC Championship game). It was one of the first gambling-focused graphics I’ve seen.
MG: I remember that graphic. It was about the Commanders being 150-to-1 to make the Super Bowl before the season or something like that. It was just another way to help tell the story, and gambling was a tool we used for that.
In the NFL, we have to be more careful with gambling content, but in the UFL, a league FOX is part of, we always show the lines on the FOX broadcast. We know where things stand.
For the NFL, we don’t steer into gambling too much, but for Sunday games, I make sure to know the Over/Under and other gambling numbers. While we won’t put it on a graphic, if a player is approaching his projected yards or stats, we might mention it casually.
