MID-HUDSON – Super Bowl 58 between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs is scheduled for Sunday, February 11, 2024. The game has been scheduled to take place on the second Sunday of February since 2022. From 2004-2021 the game was held on the first Sunday of February. Both then and now, many football fans and Super Bowl fans have lamented that working on the Monday after the championship game should be a holiday.
On average, more than 100 million people in the United States watch the Super Bowl on television, according to the Nielsen ratings that monitor viewership.
The kickoff for the big game is scheduled for 6:30 pm (ET) with the pre-game pageantry taking place more than 30 minutes before the start of the game. The game, including the halftime show usually lasts three and one-half hours, ending around 10:00 pm, which is considered late for many who have to go to work or school the following day – especially if they don’t watch the game at home.
A survey last year indicated that approximately 18.8 million Americans planned to call in sick on post-Superbowl Monday. The same polling group estimates that 16.1 million employees across the country will miss work on Monday, February 13. Many school districts in areas that have a team in the Super Bowl have canceled classes the following day, in anticipation of low attendance.
Many American corporations have repeatedly noted low attendance and even lower productivity on the day after the big game, with many of the workers suffering from “Super Bowl Flu”. Some companies adjust the work schedule to allow a later start time on Monday, while others merely hope for the best. Regardless of their boss’s decision, many workers have launched petitions to have the day after the Super Bowl declared a federal holiday while other petitions want the day deemed a national holiday.
Federal holidays apply only to employees of the federal government while federally-declared national holidays allow individual states to determine how the day will be observed. To date, none of the petitions at change.org have been successful.
