There’s a lot more riding on this year’s Super Bowl than the success of your buffalo chicken dip. 68 million US adults will be betting on this Sunday’s game, according to the American Gaming Association.

The trade group expects 35% more gamblers than last year and a record $23.1 billion worth of bets (up from $16 billion last year). And one analyst says we should prepare for the next ten years of Super Bowls to keep setting records.

The surge in wagers reflects a cultural shift that includes the NFL finally embracing gambling by its fans—in the industry’s hometown of Las Vegas, no less.

Why did the NFL change its tune on sports betting?

The short answer: money.

The NFL tried to distance itself from gambling for years, fearing for its credibility. The league even joined other sports organizations in 1992 to lobby for tighter sports gambling rules in the US.

But…when the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for legal sports betting in 2018, the league could only resist the stacks of cash on the table for so long. In 2021, the NFL said it was entering a deal with betting companies like DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars that would pay the league nearly $1 billion through 2026.

The league even did a 180 on Vegas. This year’s Super Bowl location would have had NFL commissioners of the past aghast. In 2003, the NFL famously refused a Las Vegas ad for that year’s Super Bowl with the slogan “What Happens Here, Stays Here” because it claimed the ad promoted gambling.

It’s still come down hard on its own players for gambling, though. Just last year, 10 players were suspended for breaking NFL betting policy. Gambling addiction experts also aren’t all in, as they worry about the ease of putting money on the game.

Not all the action will be in Vegas...If you want to bet on what will happen on the field, you can do it at a casino on the strip. But if you’re more interested in putting money on whether Taylor Swift will cry if the Chiefs lose or any other novelty bet, they can’t legally help you, and you’ll have to do it online or between bites of 7-layer dip.—MM

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Netanyahu orders Israeli military to plan for the evacuation of Rafah. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the country’s military to come up with a plan to get civilians out of the city, a spot in Southern Gaza to which many Palestinians have fled as a refuge from the war. The UN estimates there are more than 1.3 million people there. Netanyahu’s order came a day after the US warned that an offensive in the city—which Israel considers necessary to defeat Hamas—without a plan for the people sheltering there would be a “disaster.”

Everyone’s talking about how old Joe Biden is. President Biden is 81 years old, and while that’s not actually news, it was a hot topic yesterday in the wake of a DOJ report that that let him off the hook legally for retaining confidential documents after his VP stint, but stung politically by saying a jury might see him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” and a poorly received Thursday evening press conference where he tried to refute that image. Democrats pushed back in defense of the president, with Vice President Kamala Harris calling the characterization “politically motivated.”

Elon Musk escalates his feud with Delaware. Smarting from a state court ruling nixing his $55 billion pay package from Tesla, Musk has railed against Delaware as a corporate hub, and this week, he took action, switching the incorporation location for his brain tech startup, Neuralink, away from the state. The company told shareholders it’s now incorporated in Nevada instead, Bloomberg reported. Musk’s ire could be a problem for Delaware if others follow his lead, as most of the biggest companies are incorporated there and pay fees that make up a sizable chunk of its budget.

Sam Altman is really craving chips, but not the kind you’re stocking up on for the Super Bowl. As his company, OpenAI, hungers for semiconductors to power its AI models, Altman has been trying to raise as much as $7 trillion to expand global production capacity, WSJ reported this week.

Yes, we’re talking trillions—a herculean ambition given that just $527 billion worth of chips were sold globally last year. OpenAI has struggled to secure sufficient supply from chip designer Nvidia, which sells much of the microprocessors fueling the ongoing AI frenzy.

Seeking a helping hand

Altman wants to create OpenAI’s very own semiconductor supplier, but he can’t do it alone…

• The entrepreneur has reportedly tried to convince Silicon Valley VCs, government-affiliated investors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the sharks at SoftBank to bankroll the venture.
• He’s also talking to chip behemoth Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company about establishing production facilities worldwide.

WaPo says he’s also been in contact with US lawmakers to discuss where to best build chip factories. Microprocessor availability has also been a major priority for Uncle Sam.

Zoom out: Microsoft and Alphabet are designing their own chips, while legacy chipmakers like Intel and Advanced Micro Devices vie to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in the AI space.—SK

In addition to an Usher concert, some Taylor Swift cutaways, and a football game, Super Bowl LVIII will bring ziplining grandmothers and half of Hollywood to our screens as companies try to convince us they’re cool and fun.

With 100+ million viewers expected to tune into tomorrow’s Kansas City vs. San Francisco showdown, some of the most popular brands in the US have shelled out as much as $50 million on ad production, placement, and A-list talent for big game commercials.

Expect the nostalgic vibe of a sitcom crossover this year:

• T-Mobile reunites Scrubs co-stars, E.l.f. features some of the Suits cast, Uber Eats brings together Friends’ Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer, Mountain Dew pairs Parks & Rec’s Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman, and Booking.com’s ad stars familiar faces from 30 Rock.
• Martin Scorsese and his TikTok-famous daughter directed and starred in an extraterrestrial Squarespace commercial.
• Plus, Jenna Ortega stars alongside two parkour-abled grandmas for Doritos; Sir Patrick Stewart throws Arnold like a football for Paramount+; Post Malone and Peyton Manning get summoned by a genie for Bud Light; and many more.

Big picture: Celeb appearances in Super Bowl ads have roughly tripled over the past 10 years, according to Adweek.—ML

To go deeper on the Super Bowl ads turning heads this year, see everything our friends at Marketing Brew have been covering here.

Quote: “I said what I wanted to say.”

British Vogue’s editor in chief, Edward Enninful, just wrapped his final issue at the magazine (he’s moving on to an advisory role at its publisher, Condé Nast), and true to form, he did it in style. Not content with putting just one huge star on his last cover, Enninful—the first man and first Black person at the top of the legendary fashion magazine’s masthead—assembled 40. The image reflected a real moment, not a trick of photoshop: Celebrities from Oprah to mother-daughter duo Cindy Crawford and Kaia Gerber to Jane Fonda all gathered in one spot to pose together for Enninful’s swan song.

Stat: Planning on getting your hands greasy with some wings during the big game tomorrow? You’re in good company: The National Chicken Council anticipates that almost 1.5 billion wings will be consumed across the US. That’s enough for every person in the country to have four, per Axios. And of course the real Super Bowl contest won’t be between Taylor Swift’s boyfriend and the other team, it’ll be between the bone-in and boneless tribes. Buffalo Wild Wings, which typically serves up 11 million wings during the game, said bone-in (the kind that is actually a chicken’s wing) claimed the ring last year.

Read: The jobs that skew heavily toward one gender or race—in charts. (Wall Street Journal)

Welcome the dragon: Recipes to ring in the Lunar New Year.

Crowd-sourced inflation index: A comedian asked how much Chex Mix costs at the airport, and the internet responded.

Learn: Celebrate Black History Month with these bite-sized videos from Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The rent is too darn high: The cities with the least affordable rent on an average salary.

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