NICKELODEON TOUCHES DOWN IN MINNESOTA TO GIVE KIDS
AN INSIDER LOOK AT SUPER BOWL LII
Nick’s Original Super Bowl-themed Content includes Superstar Slime Showdown
at Super Bowl Competition Special, Hosted by Nick Cannon,
Premiering Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 4
Lip Sync Battle Shorties Sidekick and NFL Juniors’ Brand Ambassador JoJo Siwa
to Perform at NFL PLAY 60 Kids Day, Wednesday, Jan. 31
@Nickelodeon @NickSportsTV #NickSB52 #SBLII
NEW YORK–Jan. 30, 2018- Nickelodeon and the National Football League (NFL) are teaming up to get kids and families ready for the big game with brand-new, specially produced content and coverage of the events leading up to Super Bowl LII in Minnesota, beginning Wednesday, Jan. 31, across Nickelodeon, Nicktoons and TeenNick.
Nickelodeon’s on-the-ground experiences and programming include:
- A one-of-a-kind 40x80 interactive Nickelodeon destination at the Super Bowl Experience;
- Superstar Slime Showdown at Super Bowl, a one-hour original special featuring host Nick Cannon, current NFL stars (Drew Brees, Stefon Diggs, Todd Gurley and Luke Kuechly), NFL legends (Deion Sanders and DeMarcus Ware) and a halftime performance by NFL Juniors’ Brand Ambassador JoJo Siwa (Lip Sync Battles Shorties), premiering Sunday, Feb. 4, at 12 p.m. (ET/PT);
- Daily reports from Super Bowl Opening Night, the Super Bowl Experience, Super Bowl Live and Nickelodeon Universe at Mall of America by Nick stars Breanna Yde and Ricardo Hurtado (School of Rock), airing various times from Wednesday, Jan. 31 – Sunday, Feb. 4.
Nickelodeon at Super Bowl Experience is a one-of-a-kind interactive destination celebrating Nickelodeon’s current hits and iconic series including SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Loud House and Rugrats, open from Saturday, Jan. 27 – Saturday, Feb. 3. Cascading with moving slime, the 40x80 space will include:
- Two slime booths where athletes and lucky fans will have the opportunity to get doused with Nick’s signature green slime and receive a shareable video of the experience;
- A SpongeBob SquarePants football toss;
- Photo opportunities featuring oversized Loud House-themed helmets and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles locker room; and
- SpongeBob SquarePants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costumed characters will also make appearances at the booth beginning Wednesday, Jan. 31, at various times throughout the day.
Superstar Slime Showdown at Super Bowl is an hour-long competition special, airing Sunday, Feb. 4, pitting two teams of NFL athletes and Nickelodeon stars against one another in a series of fun and exciting football-themed physical challenges. Hosted by Nick Cannon and featuring NFL athletes including Drew Brees, Stefon Diggs, Todd Gurley, Luke Kuechly, Deion Sanders and DeMarcus Ware, team captains Breanna Yde and Ricardo Hurtado (School of Rock), and a halftime performance by JoJo Siwa (Lip Sync Battle Shorties), the special will be taped at the Super Bowl Experience. Mimicking the four-quarter format of a football game, teams will compete in four NFL-inspired challenges with a Nickelodeon twist, including slime-filled obstacle courses and an end zone celebration dance off. The team with the most points will win the title of Superstar Slime Showdown Champion.
In addition to the title, each Superstar Slime Showdown team will be competing for a local children’s charity. In collaboration with Nickelodeon’s Worldwide Day of Play partners, PLAYWORKS and Special Olympics, the winning team will receive a $15,000 donation, and the runner-up will receive a $5,000 donation. PLAYWORKS is the leading national nonprofit leveraging the power of play to improve children’s social and emotional health by increasing opportunities for physical activity at schools. Special Olympics provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community.
Additional Nickelodeon on-the-ground activations during Super Bowl Week in Minnesota, include:
- JoJo Siwa at NFL PLAY 60 Kids Day at the Super Bowl Experience (Wednesday, Jan. 31) – JoJo Siwa will perform her popular songs “Boomerang,” “Kid in a Candy Story” and “Hold the Drama” at NFL PLAY 60 Kids Day. The performance will take place in front of 2,500 local youth, who participate in NFL PLAY 60 programming throughout the school year and were invited to Kids Day for their commitment to staying physically active.
- Kids Tailgate Party (Wednesday, Jan. 31) – Nickelodeon’s Worldwide Day of Play partners with the Minnesota Super Bowl Host Committee to throw a Kids Tailgate Party celebrating the committee’s year-long commitment to improving health and wellness for kids through the 52 Weeks of Giving campaign. Featuring kid-friendly activities and games from the Worldwide Day of Play Tour, the one-of-a-kind Super Bowl experience will bring together kids and families from the 52 grant communities around Minnesota.
For tickets to Super Bowl Experience and for additional information on related events, fans are encouraged to visit SuperBowl.com. Fans may also follow @SuperBowl and tag their posts and photos using hashtag #SBLII.
Nickelodeon, now in its 38th year, is the number-one entertainment brand for kids. It has built a diverse, global business by putting kids first in everything it does. The company includes television programming and production in the United States and around the world, plus consumer products, digital, recreation, books and feature films. Nickelodeon’s U.S. television network is seen in more than 90 million households and has been the number-one-rated kids’ basic cable network for 22 consecutive years. For more information or artwork, visit http://www.nickpress.com. Nickelodeon and all related titles, characters and logos are trademarks of Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIA, VIAB).
Also, from KTTC:
NFL Kids Play 60 Day encourages healthy lifestyle choices
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (KTTC) - Up in Minneapolis Wednesday, while the players are doing all they can to get ready, the focus was on the kids.
There were around 2,500 Elementary School students out there from across the state, enjoying what it means to be active.
There were all sorts of activities for kids to do to get up and get moving, like punting, passing and kicking drills.
It was all part of the NFL Play 60 initiative.
For the past 10 years the NFL has put this on to try to get kids active for at least 60 minutes a day.
But the most exciting part, judging by the kids reactions, was the taping of a half-time show for a Nickelodeon special on Game Day.
The KTTC team ran into some local Elementary schoolers from Willow Creek in Rochester, who were thrilled to be a part of the fun.
"It's going pretty good, we're having a fun time," Zachary Condon, a Willow Creek Elementary Student, said. "There's obstacle courses, we're kicking field goals and all that fun stuff. I think it's important to stay active because it keeps you healthy and moving and having fun with friends."
Now the play 60 area was all under the umbrella of the super bowl experience, a sort of pop-up indoor amusement park put on by the NFL.
One part of that included a virtual farm based off of a dairy farm south of Houston.
The goal of the virtual farm was to bring the farm to the city.
They were there to show people, who might not know, where their dairy comes from.
The virtual farm is modeled after the Heintz Badger Valley Farm south of Houston.
Most of their milk gets on the shelves, in the area, within 24 hours of production.
So the Heintzs made the trip up to the Minneapolis Convention Center to be on hand to answer those questions that really require first-hand knowledge.
And they were more than happy to do so.
"As people get further away from the farm, you know back a few generations, everyone always had a grandpa or an uncle or somebody farming," Doug Heintz, said. "With such a small section of the population being farmers, its that much more important for us to tell our story."
While one component of Play 60 is activity, the other is healthy eating.
That's why the Fuel Up booth, where they were stationed, was also handing out free cheese snacks to help get that daily dose of dairy.
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Also, from the New York Times:
Nickelodeon Lines Up With the N.F.L., Confident Children Will Cheer
As part of the Super Bowl festivities in Minneapolis, the Nickelodeon cable channel helped the N.F.L. promote its Play 60 campaign, which encourages physical activity for children. Of the N.F.L. sponsors creating a prominent presence for themselves at the Super Bowl, Nickelodeon is by far the largest company that interacts primarily with children. Credit Tim Gruber for The New York Times
MINNEAPOLIS — As knowledge about head trauma and concussions has increased over the past decade, a growing number of parents have warned their children about the perils of football. Icons of the sport like Bo Jackson have said they would not have played had they known what we know now, while others have said they would actively discourage their children and grandchildren from playing.
Yet here at the home of Sunday’s Super Bowl, the N.F.L. has found a way around those warnings. The league is speaking to children directly.
On Wednesday, after two hours of sprinting around the booths at a Super Bowl Experience sponsored by the cable network Nickelodeon, about 2,500 children made their way to the N.F.L. Play 60 Field — everything at the Experience has a branded name — for a musical performance by JoJo Siwa.
You might not know Siwa, but your child certainly does. A YouTube star and participant on the reality show “Dance Moms,” Siwa, 14, is a familiar face to the millions who watch her videos and sing along to her songs.
During a break in her performance on Wednesday, she led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to Play 60 — the N.F.L. youth fitness campaign that began late in 2007. After she left, Keith McMaster, the master of ceremonies, took the stage and asked for “a big round of applause for the N.F.L. and JoJo Siwa.”
A child being showered with green slime at a Nickelodeon event tied to the Super Bowl. Research conducted by the N.F.L. has found that its most avid fans became attached to football in elementary school. Credit Tim Gruber for The New York Times
Siwa was performing at the behest of Nickelodeon, the Viacom-owned television network known for hit children’s shows like “PAW Patrol” and “SpongeBob SquarePants.” While a number of N.F.L. sponsors have created a prominent presence for themselves at the Super Bowl, Nickelodeon is by far the largest company that interacts primarily with children.
“This is probably physically the biggest thing we do,” Cyma Zarghami, the president of Nickelodeon, said.
Over the past five or six years, Nickelodeon has been “reinvesting in the relationship that kids have to sports,” Zarghami said. And while Nickelodeon has partnerships with most of the country’s biggest leagues and has a presence at Nascar races, the N.B.A. All-Star Game and tennis’s United States Open, it has no bigger sports partner than the N.F.L.
Research conducted by the league has found that most avid N.F.L. fans became attached to the sport in elementary school. With participation rates in youth football declining and parents ever more aware of the risks of head trauma from playing the sport, the N.F.L. needed new ways to reach young people. A deep partnership with the biggest children’s television network was an obvious strategy. And Nickelodeon has been eager to help. They have been partners since 2010.
“As the biggest spectator sport, everybody is looking at sort of how they cultivate the next generation of fans,” Zarghami said. “We are a great entree into that.”
JoJo Siwa performed at the Super Bowl Experience at the behest of Nickelodeon. “This is probably physically the biggest thing we do,” said Cyma Zarghami, the president of Nickelodeon. Credit Tim Gruber for The New York Times
“Kids love Nickelodeon,” Kamran Mumtaz, a spokesman for the N.F.L., said in an email. “Kids love sports. Kids love the Super Bowl. And the Super Bowl is all about larger than life sports entertainment. Together, we can bring the excitement of Super Bowl week to kids and parents in a fun and unique way.”
At Wednesday’s performance, parents, teachers and chaperones sat in bleachers or stood in clusters of two or three as their charges crowded the stage to be near Siwa. They roared when McMaster, also known as Coach Keith, said they were being filmed and might appear on Nickelodeon on Sunday, as Siwa’s performance would be the “halftime show” for Nickelodeon’s “Superstar Slime Showdown at Super Bowl.”
Upstairs at the Super Bowl Experience, the N.F.L.-themed carnival and trade show that pops up at the game every year, league partners like Bridgestone, Castrol and FedEx have booths with football-themed activities. But even inside a cavernous downtown convention center, the sight of Nickelodeon’s immediately recognizable bright orange and slime green colors made the network’s booth the most attractive to the children in attendance.
As helpers got two young volunteers settled in plastic ponchos and into a set of clear glass booths — buckets hanging ominously overhead, like age-appropriate swords of Damocles — a man led dozens of children in a modified version of the Minnesota Vikings’ Skol chant.
“Slime! Slime! Slime! Slime!”
Slimed they were.
The day’s larger question went unanswered. As the N.F.L. is mired in a concussion crisis, has dealt with high-profile cases of domestic violence and was in the middle of a political tug of war this season, why does Nickelodeon associate with the league?
Children at the Super Bowl Experience. “As the biggest spectator sport, everybody is looking at sort of how they cultivate the next generation of fans,” Zarghami of Nickelodeon said. “We are a great entree into that.” Credit Tim Gruber for The New York Times
“We think it is wrong to target children in this way,” said Josh Golin, the executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. In 2015, the organization released a report criticizing the N.F.L.’s efforts to market itself to children.
To Golin, one of the biggest offenders was “NFL Rush Zone,” a bizarre, animated show produced by Nickelodeon and the N.F.L. that combined football and superheroes. “Many children’s television shows are trying to sell a product,” he said, “but this is so blatant that it is just an ad for the N.F.L.”
Zarghami, the Nickelodeon president, has heard criticism of the network’s relationship with the N.F.L. before. “Look, as a mother, it’s tough, it’s a tough sport,” she said. But what children see on Nickelodeon are players getting slimed and interacting with other kids, humanizing them.
“The actual sport doesn’t ever actually get to Nickelodeon,” she said.
As a children’s channel, Nickelodeon is at the forefront of numerous trends, like the movement from traditional television onto digital platforms and the rise of YouTube stars like Siwa. But while observers have predicted for decades that other sports will eventually overtake the N.F.L. — and Zarghami said Nickelodeon would like to be more involved with soccer and women’s sports — football is still the most popular sport in the country, even among children.
And if something is popular, she said, Nickelodeon feels it has to be there. “Another place where kids have a lot of passion is the music business,” she said. “That comes with its pros and cons, too.”
“We have to be connected to what kids care about,” she added, “and that’s really what we are about.”
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Update: Photos of JoJo Siwa's Super Bowl LII performance can be found here on JustJaredJr.com!
- JoJo Siwa Designs Shirts And Bow For Super Bowl LII
More Nick: Nickelodeon's Viral Sports Clip Series 'Crashletes' Returns For Third Season, Premiering 2/11 On TeenNick's NickSports Block!
Originally published: Tuesday, January 30, 2018.
Additional source: Business Wire.
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