It Will Be a Super Bowl First, but Unrelated to Football

We don't yet know yet which teams will be playing in the Super Bowl, but Bloomberg vs. Trump is already lined up. After news surfaced that Michael Bloomberg would shell out $10 million for 60 seconds worth of advertising during the game, the Trump campaign has matched the effort, reports the New York Times. This is unprecedented, notes Quartz. While presidential campaigns have bought ads that appeared in certain markets during the game, this is the first time such an ad will air in all of the approximately 100 million households expected to tune in. And it will happen not once but twice on Feb. 2.

"It's actually smart for Bloomberg," Ken Goldstein of the University of San Francisco tells the Times. "Bloomberg is running a national campaign, and the most efficient way to reach a lot of people in a national campaign is buying an ad in a top-rated show. And as expensive as it is, it's cheaper than buying the ads market by market." Bloomberg is funding his own campaign, and he's keeping his focus national, bucking the traditional approach of courting early state voters. Trump's campaign, meanwhile, is flush with cash, entering the new year with $103 million in the bank. (More Michael Bloomberg 2020 stories.)