Chris Stapleton performs at the 50th annual CMA Awards in Nashville, Tenn., on Nov. 2, 2016. Stapleton will hit next month’s Super Bowl stage to sing the national anthem, while R&B legend Babyface will perform “America the Beautiful.” (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)
Anticipation around Super Bowl LVII was already mounting with the reveal of Rihanna as the halftime performer and now the league has unveiled its full slate of scheduled performances for the big day.
While fans (and teams) still have to get through the conference championship round to see who will compete for the Vince Lombardi trophy, the NFL announced that eight-time Grammy award winner Chris Stapleton will be performing the national anthem.
Babyface arrives at the 80th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Meanwhile, Babyface, who has notched 12 Grammy awards and 125 top 10 performing hits, was tapped to perform his rendition of America the Beautiful.
Perhaps the biggest and most welcome surprise is that actor Sheryl Lee Ralph will perform the song widely known as the Black national anthem, Lift Every Voice. The announcement of Ralph's involvement with the Super Bowl comes on the heels of her first Emmy win for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for her role as Barbara Howard in Abbott Elementary.
Actor Troy Kotsur, who won an Oscar for his role in CODA, is set to perform the national anthem in sign language, Colin Denny, a member of the Navajo Nation based in Arizona will sign America the Beautiful, and deaf performer Justina Miles will sign Lift Every Voice.
Apple is planning a subscription service that would function like Netflix for games, according to people familiar with the matter. The iPhone maker has also discussed partnering with developers as a publisher, which could signal ambitions to assume distribution and marketing costs for games.
Following a 2018 Supreme Court ruling year that cleared the way for sports gambling, fans in seven states can bet on the upcoming Super Bowl for the first time ー and leaders in the budding industry are anticipating the Big Game will deliver their biggest day yet. “We expect the Super Bowl to be our single biggest day in the company’s history,” Mike Raffensperger, the chief marketing officer for betting platform FanDuel, told Cheddar.
FightCamp is a new fitness company that streams boxing classes from top instructors direct to consumers. The classes can be tailored to the needs of boxers at all levels of expertise ー from newbies to punching pros said co-founder Tommy Duquette.
The New York Knicks and its jersey sponsor, the website-building platform Squarespace, are doling out assists to four local businesses as part of the second annual "Make It Awards." "Partnering with Squarespace to help those entrepreneurs get their businesses to the next level was something we were very interested in doing and it's been a major hit," said MSG Sports' senior vice president of business operations, Kristin Bernert, in an interview on Cheddar.
The Delaware Blue Coats will make their debut Wednesday night at the brand new Philadelphia 76ers Fieldhouse in Wilmington, Del., and the team will share the spotlight with an arena that boasts five stories, can seat 2,500 fans, and includes three NBA-regulation basketball courts. The flashy new arena was designed to promote youth sports in the state of Delaware and the greater Philadelphia region. "It's all geared towards youth," Chris Heck, the president of the Philadelphia 76ers, told Cheddar.
The NBA is transparent about its approval of legalized, regulated sports betting ー but the league is also clearly communicating that it wants a fair share of the money wagered on its games. "It's our view that if state governments are going to be authorizing private entities, in most cases casinos, to generate significant revenue ー billions of dollars of revenue ー off of the NBA competitions, that the NBA participate in some way," said the NBA's head of fantasy and gaming Scott Kaufman-Ross.
Former Green Bay Packer Ahman Green is a four time Pro Bowler, but he's also an avid gamer. When it comes to Halo he's just another fan that looks up to professionals like Proximitty and LethuL for help with his improving his skills.
