In this year's Super Bowl, only sure winner is Comcast

From grass turf to the video stream inside your home, Comcast will have a hand in Super Bowl XLIX between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks. Global Spectrum, part of Comcast-Spectacor and based at the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia, manages the state-of-the-art University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale (AZ), where 12,000 people are expected to work on game day -- opening the gates for fans, shuttling the Katy Perry halftime show on and off the gridiron stage in the allotted time, and managing security. The Comcast-owned NBC-TV network will broadcast the game for an audience that could top 100 million -- and 20 million subscribers can watch it on Comcast cable-TV and Internet network. The company also will use the popularity of the game to promote the TV Everywhere platform -- that is, watching the game on laptops, desktops or tablets away from the television. With "Super Stream Sunday," NBC will make the streamed game and related Super Bowl shows available for free and without authentication. The event is likely to generate $350 million to $360 million in advertising revenue for NBC and, thus, Comcast, according to industry experts.

[And I, for one, welcome our new network overlords.]