Chiefs beat the Eagles in Super Bowl LVII

Electric carmaker Tesla faces a hit on Super Bowl Sunday, when an ad will show the alleged dangers of its "Full Self-Driving" technology.

The commercial, which is being aired in Washington, DC, Austin, Tallahassee, Albany, Atlanta and Sacramento does not paint Tesla in the best light.

The ad is part of a multimillion dollar advertising campaign by The Dawn Project. Its founder, Dan O’Dowd, is a California tech CEO who has dedicated millions of his own money (and a failed US Senate race) to the cause.

The ad cost $598,000, a Dawn Project spokesperson told CNN.

It shows a Tesla Model 3, which allegedly has the Full Self-Driving mode turned on, running over a child-sized dummy on a school crosswalk, and then a fake baby in a stroller, in a series of tests by the Dawn Project. In the spot, the car swerves into oncoming traffic, zooms past stopped school buses and cruises through “do not enter” signs.

The Dawn Project says it wants to make computer-controlled systems safer for humanity, shooting its own videos as tests of Tesla’s alleged design flaws.

More background: In August, O’Dowd published a video showing a Tesla plowing into child-sized mannequins. Some Tesla fans posted their own videos in defense, using their own dummies or even their own children — YouTube has taken down several test videos involving actual children, citing safety risks.

O’Dowd received a cease and desist letter from Tesla over the video, claiming he and the Dawn Project were “disparaging Tesla’s commercial interests and disseminating defamatory information to the public.”

O’Dowd responded to the cease-and-desist with a 1,736-word post in which he pushed back, defended his tests and returned barbs from Musk and some Tesla supporters.

Though officially in beta mode, Full Self-Driving is available to any user in North America who wants to purchase the $15,000 feature.

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system is intended to someday work on city streets, but despite its wide rollout, is still officially in a developmental “beta” program. No car for sale on the market is yet able to drive itself.

Tesla did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

If the Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl on Sunday, quarterback Patrick Mahomes will be the 11th Associated Press MVP to win a Super Bowl in the same season.

The last player to achieve both was Kurt Warner in 1999.

Quarterbacks are by far the most common MVPs, in both the AP's season-long contest and in Super Bowl MVP voting.

This year, Mahomes and Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts will make history by being the first two Black starting quarterbacks to face off in a Super Bowl game.

When you’re the lone surviving store in any industry, you’ve earned the right to have fun and hype it up. That’s exactly what the only remaining store in the Blockbuster video rental chain is doing, and it’s during the Super Bowl. It helps if you still have a VCR, of course.

The store in Bend, Oregon, has been teasing an upcoming ad on Instagram @blockbusterbend with a post that says, “Is the world coming to an end or is Blockbuster releasing its first commercial in a really, really long time” Yes. See you on 2/12/23.”

Oh, and, in a hint that the world may be coming to an end, cockroaches feature prominently in these posts.

Another post instructs how to watch the commercial: “On 2.12.23 visit The Last Blockbuster in Bend, or watch live on our Instagram at halftime.”

If you miss it because, of course, Rihanna, the store is also renting VHS copies of it for $2.

So what if the ad isn’t in the big leagues, like Budweiser or Coca-Cola with a national spot? For this one store, it’s an attempt at generating buzz, no matter how big or hyperlocal.

And it seems to be working.

The store has been getting lots of calls since the teasers surfaced this week. “Everyone who calls is super excited, and they want to know more,” said Sandi Harding, the store’s general manager, in an interview with CNN Business.

At one time, Blockbuster operated more than 9,000 stores nationwide renting movies and video games. But the advent of on-demand service like Netflix pushed it out of business.

Blockbuster stores fell one by one, with only 10 left in 2017, and then just one.

The location in Bend, Oregon, is the only evidence left to prove to GenZers that Blockbuster actually did exist, and it’s how Americans watched movies at home pre-Netflix.

The Super Bowl pregame show is underway in Glendale, Arizona.

In addition to Rihanna’s highly anticipated halftime show performance, a number of additional Hollywood heavyweights are joining the major sporting event as pre-show performers.

The NFL announced on Tuesday that Emmy-winning actor Sheryl Lee Ralph will perform “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in the pre-show. The “Abbott Elementary” star notably sang on stage while accepting her Emmy award in 2022.

Joining Ralph in the pre-show festivities is Grammy-winning country music artist Chris Stapleton, who has been tapped to sing the national anthem. R&B crooner Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds will also perform, with a rendition of “America the Beautiful.”

Each performer will have talent accompanying them to provide American Sign Language on behalf of the National Association of the Deaf, according to a release from the NFL.

Oscar winner Troy Kotsur will sign the national anthem alongside Stapleton. Kotsur won a supporting actor Academy Award in 2022 for his work in “CODA,” becoming the second Deaf person ever to win an acting Oscar after Marlee Matlin.

Super Bowl LVI was the crypto world’s coming out party. Buzzy firms made bold pitches last year, and shelled out millions of dollars on ads encouraging viewers not to be afraid of this new-fangled digital investment.

You can expect a lot less noise from Team Crypto during today's Super Bowl LVII telecast.

In the year since those celebrity-packed ads debuted, the entire crypto industry has been rattled by a collapse in digital asset values. Bankruptcies began to pile up over the summer.

Then the real pain started.

Of the four crypto or crypto-affiliated companies that advertised in the Super Bowl last year, one (FTX) has collapsed completely. The others (Coinbase, Crypto.com and eToro) have fought against industry headwinds. Shares of Coinbase, the only publicly traded company in the group, have fallen more than 60% since its “floating QR code” ad became one of the most talked-about spots.

Don’t expect any of those companies to be back this year. FTX is bankrupt and under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors. The multi-asset trading platform eToro confirmed to CNN it would not be splurging on an ad this year.

Coinbase declined to comment. Representatives for Crypto.com — the company behind the ad featuring LeBron James telling his younger self to “call your own shots” — didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Despite what is being called a “crypto winter,” sports advertising remains a crucial avenue for digital curencies, marketing experts say, as their target demographics share significant overlap — sports fans and crypto traders tend to be mostly male and young.

But turmoil in the crypto space means marketers are changing their tactics.

“Crypto firms are focusing less on crypto advertising and more on investing in better user experiences, products, and customer service,” said Silvia Lacayo, head of marketing at crypto exchange Bitstamp US.

Read more about the changing crypto landscape here.

Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce will make history Sunday as the first brothers to play against each other in the Super Bowl.

Their mother, Donna Kelce, told CNN “it’s going to be easy” for her when it comes to rooting interests.

“I have to stand and scream the entire game,” she told CNN’s Poppy Harlow in an interview Wednesday. The interview aired Feb. 9 on the show CNN This Morning.

Asked what she’ll say to the son who ends up on the losing side, Kelce told CNN she’ll go to the losing team’s hotel and “I’ll give my son a huge hug and a kiss.”

“Because there’s nothing that I could say that will mean anything at that point,” Kelce said. “He’s going to be a broken person. He’ll be happy for his brother, but the hours and the months that you put in to get to this point, it’s tough.”

Superstar singer Rihanna, who will perform in the Super Bowl LVII halftime show, said she has been so focused on her impending performance that she forgot about her upcoming birthday later this month.

She called the task “incredible” but “almost impossible."

The singer said everyone involved in the production is in the final tune-up stage. It's a massive undertaking, with as many as three to 400 people setting up and breaking down the stage, all in about eight minutes, Rihanna said.

"It's incredible. It's almost impossible," she said of the feat.

“When you become a mom there is something that just happens where you feel like you can take on the world," said the icon and entrepreneur, who recently had a baby. "You can do anything."

"The Super Bowl is one of the big stages in the world, so as scary as that was, because I haven’t been on stage in 7 years, there’s something exhilarating about the challenge of it all," said Rihanna, who last toured in 2016. "It’s important for me to do this this year. It’s important for representation. It’s important for my son to see that.”

While overall food price inflation is up 11.8% over last year, prices on some popular snack items are down just in time for game day, according to the 2023 Wells Fargo Super Bowl Food Report.

But with beverages, brace for sticker shock on at least one must-have for many people: beer. Beer prices this year have jumped 11% from 2022, while wine and spirits are up 4% and 2% respectively, according to the report.

With that out of the way, here's the good news — 

In media appearances leading up to the Super Bowl, Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts have recognized the significance of being the first two Black quarterbacks to start in the same Super Bowl.

The matchup comes 35 years after Doug Williams became the first Black quarterback to start and win in the big game.

For 27-year-old Chiefs quarterback Mahomes — who is looking for his second Super Bowl ring when the two teams face off in Arizona Sunday — the moment of history is “special.”

“I’ve learned more and more about the history of the Black quarterback since I’ve been in this league,” he told reporters.

Eagles quarterback Hurts — in just his second full season as a starter — is just the eighth Black quarterback to start in the Super Bowl. The short list includes a fellow Philadelphia player: Donovan McNabb, who started Super Bowl XXXIX.

Read more here.