Regardless of what happens on the field there are a few reasons why this Super Bowl is unique.

1. You can stream it for free
NBC will stream the entire game online and on the NBC Sports Live app for free. This will be the second time that NBC streams the game but it’s the first time that they will include the pregame and halftime show coverage. The halftime show will also be live-streamed on YouTube.
2. It will air in Spanish
For the first time ever the Super Bowl will air live in Spanish. NBC will broadcast the game on their Spanish language network mun2 which will be relaunched as NBC Universo on February 1st. The vast majority of the advertisers bought spots on both NBC and NBC Universo. It is expected that some will air their English ads while others are said to have created unique Spanish ads.
3. More focus on women
No doubt it’s been a tough year for the NFL. This season they faced issues of domestic violence, child abuse and rape. These stories, and the way the NFL handled them, made some women question their allegiance to this league and the advertisers who stood with it. The NFL has done a great deal to try and make things right and now advertisers are stepping up with ads that acknowledge the sport’s growing female fan base. Last year 45% of Super Bowl viewers were female and this year’s halftime show (with Katy Perry as the headline performer) and the ads that will air during the game are expected to reflect that executives have taken notice of those numbers.

Whether you watch the game because you love the sport or the because you love the ads, this is sure to be an exciting one. We’re looking forward to see who wins big both on and off the field!

While you couldn’t easily forget this was a sports-focused symposium, (the sports puns alone were a constant reminder) it was amazing how many of the lessons shared could be applied to any business. Perhaps it should not have come as a surprise, sports leagues are after all, very big businesses.

The biggest takeaway from the event is that diversity and inclusion practices are beneficial in all aspects of your business. Diversity among your staff gives you different perspectives and can protect you against major pitfalls that a group of like-minded people may never have seen coming. Diversity among suppliers can provide you with better and more cost effective options that you may have never considered. And diversity among your customers keeps your product relevant and revenues growing.

So what does market research have to do with all this? Glad you asked. Knowing that you want a diverse customer base is the first step, the second step is identifying what groups are most relevant to your business and determining how to most effectively attract them to your product or service. This is where market research can help.

The demographics of the country are rapidly changing and there is no better time than the present to consider how these changes impact your business.  Market research can help you identify a strategy to diversify and grow your customer base.

Women who love this sport have long dealt with being misunderstood and underrepresented; we turned a blind eye to the fact that the NFL and those surrounding it didn’t really care about us. We’ve dealt with being offered mostly pink jerseys and bejeweled shirts (this was finally fixed this year), we’ve dealt with being misrepresented in commercials like this one for NFL Fantasy football or this one from Fox Sports, and we’ve dealt with being talked down to from sites like ESPN. However, the days of turning a blind eye and shrugging it off have come to an end.

We can no longer blindly support a league that hands out four-game suspensions for taking Adderall and two-game suspensions for knocking your wife unconscious. How should we interpret and react to this? Do we boycott? As Katie Nolan from Fox put it, boycotting will simply “remove the critical thinkers from the conversation.” So while boycotting probably isn’t the best solution, we do need to call the NFL to task, and although that may start with Goodell, it certainly does not end there. The problem is bigger than Goodell, the Ray Rice situation isn’t a one time issue but the result of a systematic problem in the league.

Does that mean that Goodell shouldn’t get fired? Absolutely not. Getting rid of Goodell would be a good start. Not because he dropped the ball this one time, but because in 2012 he identified the rising number of players being arrested for domestic violence (the most common crime for which NFL players are arrested) and promised to do something about it. Not only did he not do anything about it, he continued to let players get away with it.

Whether Goodell stays or goes we, as women and as football fans, need to make sure that the league continues to address this issue long after the media is tired of reporting about it. So far the NFL has provided $3 million of promotional time for anti-domestic violence campaign ads. The league also pledged a multiyear, multimillion-dollar commitment of money and other resources to the National Domestic Violence hotline, which has seen an 84% spike in calls since the Rice video was made public. We’ll pretend for a second that this isn’t just a huge PR scramble to make people feel better about football and call these actions a good start. But we need more. We need the NFL to send a clear message to players that this behavior will not be tolerated. But that means they need to provide players a place to get help if they feel prone to getting violent. The NFL must educate players early on how to treat women and deal with anger. You have to be aggressive to play football, so let’s make sure these players know how to handle that aggressiveness when they’re not on the field. And let’s get to players as soon as the problem starts manifesting itself. A perfect example is Jameis Winston; he’ll most likely play in the NFL one day but he’s already acting out and getting away with it. This is the perfect time to offer him some serious guidance because pretending his behavior is not going to get worse is simply laughable and as Goodell himself put it “ignorance is not an excuse.”

Bottom line, the NFL has FINALLY figured out that their female fans are important, they are finally listening to what we want. Let’s make sure they know what we want is a league that cares about women and one that sets the right example.