Glendale, Arizona

The Superbowl is widely considered the most important sporting event in The USA, but what's it all about? Well, it's the climax of the American football season and I'm going to tell you about it.

The National Football League (NFL) started in 1920 and was very successful. It was inevitable that it would face competition from other leagues looking to get in on the act and indeed in 1960 the American Football League was set up. A major battle started to sign the best players, coaches and attract fans over from the NFL and after only 6 years a deal was agreed to merge the two leagues. One of the conditions of this merger was to have an end-of-season match up between the winners of each league - the Superbowl.

The first ever Superbowl was between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs, with the NFL's Green Bay winning 35 points to 10. They repeated their victory a year later against the Oakland Raiders winning 33-14. However, they didn't manage to make it to the Superbowl three times running, and in fact their next appearance was much later in 1997 when they beat the New England Patriots 35-21.

So just how popular is this football match? Well, according to research at any one time there are around 90 million people in America watching the game, with a worldwide audience obviously much more than that. It's become an unofficial national holiday, an excuse for friends and family to get together and eat, drink and even watch a little of the game. Only Thanksgiving day sees more food eaten than on Superbowl Sunday. Oh yes, it's always on a Sunday. It used to be the second Sunday in January, but as the season has become longer the date is now fixed for the first Sunday in February. The venue for the match changes every year. In 2008 it was held in Arizona, 2007's game was in Miami and Detroit hosted the one before that. The very first Superbowl was held in Los Angeles.

The winning team receives the Vince Lombardi trophy, named after one of the sport's greatest ever coaches. The individuals in the winning team receive the Superbowl ring. This is a gold and diamond ring which features the name and logo of the team and the number of the Superbowl. That of 2008 was Superbowl 42, expressed in roman numerals. (XLII)