In professional American football, the Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League (NFL). The Super Bowl was first played January 15, 1967 as part of an agreement between the NFL and its younger rival, the American Football League (AFL) in which each league's championship team would play each other in an "AFL-NFL World Championship Game". After the leagues merged in 1970, the Super Bowl became the NFL's championship game. Since then, the game has been played annually on a Sunday as the final game of the the playoffs, originally early to mid-January when there was a 14 game schedule, but late January or even the first Sunday in February as the current 16 game schedule dictates (a 17th bye-week has been added for TV exposure).

The Super Bowl is usually the most-watched U.S. television broadcast of the year, attracting many companies to spend millions of dollars on commercials. This has caused the starting time of the game to be pushed back later and later, to ensure the Sunday night prime time audience on the East Coast. The last true day game (which ended before local sunset) of the series was Super Bowl XI in January 1977. In addition, many popular singers and musicians have performed during the Super Bowl's pre-game and halftime ceremonies. This is the second-largest U.S. food consumption day, following Thanksgiving.

The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather than the year it was held. The NFL season extends beyond New Year's Eve, so identifying the games by the year of the Super Bowl could cause some confusion.

By any measure, the Super Bowl is one of the most watched television programs of the year in the U.S. The game tends to have high television ratings, on average, 40 percent of all U.S. households, and 60 percent of all homes tuned into television during the game. This means that on average, 80 to 90 million Americans are tuned into the Super Bowl at any given moment. It is also estimated that 130-140 million tune into some part of the game. Studies suggest that the average global viewership is just over 100 million – the vast majority of whom are U.S. viewers. The highest rated game according to Nielsen was Super Bowl XVI in 1982 which was watched in 49.1% of households or 40,020,000 households at the time. Many people tune in to the Super Bowl solely to watch the creative commercials.

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