Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is the final contest of the professional season and determines the league's annual champion.

Currently the Super Bowl routinely finishes among the all-time top 50 programs in television ratings, and the 1994 game reached an estimated 750 million viewers around the world.

Now probably the most important single-day sporting event in the United States, the Super Bowl had more modest beginnings.

n 1967 the champions of the American Football League (which merged with the NFL in 1970) and the NFL met in what was called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.

The name was later shortened to Super Bowl, named after a child's toy, the Super Ball. In this first game, the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10.

The Los Angeles Coliseum, site of the game, fell far short of a sellout, although tickets were only $10 each. In comparison, the highest ticket price at the 1994 Super Bowl reached $250, with scalpers illegally charging more than twice that much.