The Money Behind Super Bowl 56: 11 Numbers You Need To Know For Rams Vs. Bengals

The NFL season ends Sunday, with Super Bowl LVI scheduled to kick off at 6:30 p.m. EST. The Cincinnati Bengals, making their first Super Bowl appearance in 33 years, are seeking their first championship. The Los Angeles Rams are back in the big game for the second time in four years and are taking aim at the franchise’s second Super Bowl title.

The Rams have the advantage of playing the game at SoFi Stadium, becoming the second team in NFL history to play a Super Bowl at home, after last year’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But the Bengals have numbers of their own on their side—for starters, a $4.53 million wager that they’ll win, which is believed to be the largest bet ever made through an American mobile sportsbook.

Of course, that is just the start of the money riding on this game. Here are 11 dollar figures to know.

$0: The combined paycheck, roughly speaking, for Super Bowl halftime performers Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar. Halftime acts receive nothing but union scale and coverage of production costs, forgoing their usual performance fees in exchange for the publicity that comes with playing to some 100 million TV viewers.

$160: The profit a bettor could make with a $100 bet on the underdog Bengals to win. (A Rams fan could earn $100 with a bet of $185.) But while Ohio has legalized sports betting, wagering is not yet live in the state, and it remains illegal in California. No matter: The American Gaming Association believes the game’s betting handle could set a record, with perhaps $7.6 billion on the line.

$3,408: The cheapest ticket available on mobile ticket marketplace Gametime (before taxes and fees) as of Wednesday afternoon. That is a steep price to pay, but it still represents a nearly $800 drop from two days earlier. The listed get-in price was similar at secondary marketplaces Vivid Seats ($3,518), SeatGeek ($3,710), StubHub ($3,925), TicketMaster ($4,000) and TickPick ($4,452). According to TicketIQ, a ticket search engine, the average ticket price as of Wednesday was $7,762.

$150,000: The bonus available to players on the Super Bowl’s winning team this season; players on the losing team will receive $75,000 each. NFL salaries are for the regular season only, but players are eligible to earn modest incentives for each playoff game they’re on the roster for, as spelled out in the league’s collective bargaining agreement. This season’s Super Bowl champions will have racked up $300,000 apiece, counting all four postseason games. Some players could earn more than that based on incentives in their individual contracts. For instance, Odell Beckham Jr. will reportedly receive $500,000 for playing in the Super Bowl and another $500,000 if the Rams win.

$7 million: The reported price for some of the 30-second Super Bowl commercial slots NBC has sold this year, even higher than the network’s reported asking price of $6.5 million. Last year, CBS sold the slots for a reported average of $5.6 million.

$22 million: Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford’s total earnings before taxes and agents’ fees this season, counting both his on-field earnings from salary and bonuses and his annual off-field earnings from endorsements, appearances, licensing and memorabilia. That makes him the highest-paid player in Sunday’s game, just ahead of Bengals rookie receiver Ja’Marr Chase. Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow is well behind them, earning just $2.3 million in salary this season, but he could be poised for a marketing payday.

$194 million: The Bengals’ player payroll this season, according to Spotrac. Although they may lack the marquee names of the Rams—whose roster features Matthew Stafford, Aaron Donald, Jalen Ramsey, Cooper Kupp and Odell Beckham Jr., to name a few—they are actually shelling out more than Los Angeles ($191 million). That’s largely due to the Bengals’ larger middle class: Cincinnati has 34 players making at least $1 million in total cash this season, to Los Angeles’ 16. Both teams are relatively frugal, though, with the Bengals’ payroll ranking 23rd in the league and the Rams’ 25th.

$220 million: The national media rights payout to each of the NFL’s 32 teams this season (not including the league’s NFL Sunday Ticket deal with DirecTV), a figure that is set to rise to $377 million by 2032 under the league’s new media contracts. That represents the biggest chunk of revenue for both the Bengals ($397 million in revenue in 2019, the last prepandemic season) and the Rams ($423 million), which helps explain why they can field similarly competitive teams despite very different financial situations.

$4.8 billion: The value of the Rams, No. 4 on Forbes’ list of the NFL’s most valuable teams from August. That puts them $2.525 billion ahead of the Bengals, who were 31st at $2.275 billion. It’s also a big jump from where the Rams were in 2015, in their last year playing in St. Louis, when Forbes pegged the value of the team at $1.45 billion. The Bengals were just behind them that season, at $1.445 billion.

$5 billion: The reported construction cost of SoFi Stadium, the privately financed home of the Rams and the site of Sunday’s game. It cost more than twice as much as the Las Vegas Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium, which carried a reported price tag of $1.9 billion and also opened in 2020.

$10.7 billion: The net worth of Rams owner Stan Kroenke, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list. Kroenke, also the man behind the world’s second-most-valuable sports empire and America’s seventh-richest team owner on Forbes’ list in October, got to this point by taking big risks. The opposing owners on Sunday run the Bengals as a family business.