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It is disliked when NFL players complain to referees. But at least they don’t pee on them.
The same can’t be said for the competitors of the Puppy Bowl, Animal Planet’s canine football game, which takes place in October but doesn’t air until Super Bowl Sunday afternoon.
The event’s referee, Dan Schechner, is prepared for all situations by keeping five identical uniforms in his dressing room so he can change if an accident occurs. Mr. Schechner, 49, admitted that since taking up the game in 2011 he has become lax in handing out penalties for “watering the lawn prematurely.”
“I don’t automatically reach for the flag,” he said. “We have to play a game.”
This year’s Puppy Bowl, which will be broadcast Sunday at 2 p.m. Eastern time, marks the 20th edition of the event, a milestone for a program that started as a platform for puppies before growing into a counterprogramming juggernaut. What started as a tongue-in-cheek feed of playtime.
The three-hour showdown over a football-sized chew toy has aired longer than “Grey’s Anatomy.” Animal Planet said last year’s Puppy Bowl reached more than 13 million viewers.
Its success comes with unique production challenges. Players cannot throw because they lack an opposable thumb. They sleep on the 20-yard line, and sometimes they try to bathe in water bowls. They are particularly bad at determining when to go for a 2-point conversion.
More than 100 crew members and 200 poop bags are required to lure the pups in like a football game. “The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade requires the same amount of coordination,” said Howard Lee, president of Discovery Networks, owner of Animal Planet.
In an interview, Mr Lee described the program as a call to pet adoption disguised as a football game. According to Animal Planet, all but one of the 1,298 dogs that have played in past Puppy Bowls have been adopted. The event results in increased interest in the shelters whose puppies enter the field, although those who play in the game are generally adopted by the time it airs.
The 131 members of this year’s lineup were selected through an online casting call this summer, and they came from more than 70 shelters and rescue centers across the United States. Everyone was between three to six months old.
As in the NFL, there were plenty of possibilities: Levi, a 72-pound Great Dane, was the largest puppy ever to compete in the event. Bark Purdy, a Chihuahua mix, shares a name (and probably his agility) with the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers.
In October, the draft picks were taken to a hockey arena in Glens Falls, NY, which was equipped with a 28-foot-long AstroTurf field. The game was filmed over the course of a week to allow the puppies adequate hydration and naps. The producers later edited out any slow periods of game play.
To avoid injuries, smaller breeds such as the Dachshund and Pug faced off in the first half, while the Husky and Bloodhound came out stronger in the second half. (In Mr. Schechner’s experience, smaller breeds are more likely to “escape guards” and “break tackles.”) Puppies from two teams – Team Ruff and Team Fluff – took turns taking chew toys to both end zones. Scored a touchdown.
On-set trainer Victoria Shadey benches the dogs when they’re looking overwhelmed. In her 18 years working at the Puppy Bowl, she has perfected her technique for making dogs look patriotic during the national anthem: hanging gifts above their heads.
“Freeze-dried chicken, freeze-dried liver, freeze-dried cheese: this is what’s going to get your puppy bowl-worthy performance,” Ms. Schade said.
‘Why are we working so hard?’
The first Puppy Bowl, which aired in 2005, resembled a pickup game. Margo Kent, who was the network’s executive producer at the time, said that Animal Planet producers were asked by the network’s general manager to prepare some kind of counterprogramming for the Super Bowl.
The task seemed impossible. “We’d joke, ‘Why are we working so hard?'” Ms. Kent said. “Let’s put the puppies in a box and put a camera on it.”
They tried it out on the Discovery Soundstage in Silver Spring, MD, with a few dozen dogs from local shelters. Camera operators filmed from behind a layer of clear Plexiglas, which had to be repeatedly wiped down because the puppies kept pressing their wet noses against it.
David Doyle, who was vice president of production and development at Animal Planet at the time, said, “We couldn’t believe how well it turned out.” The event became “the darling of advertising sales and senior management”, he added. “Suddenly all this happened, how can we make money from this cool thing?”
By Puppy Bowl II, Subaru commercials lined the stadium. A kitten halftime show was added, Ms. Kent said, but it went awry when exploding confetti cannons caused all the cats to jump out of the filming enclosure. (This was re-taped, with the crew spraying confetti by hand.)
Scorekeeping and uniforms were added to Puppy Bowl XI, and three years later a sloth was introduced as an assistant referee. Along with each engaging addition, Puppy Bowl also devoted a large portion of airtime to encouraging viewers to adopt pets, including senior dogs and special needs puppies.
If this program is good for puppy adoption, it could be even better for Warner Bros. Discovery, one of the entertainment industry’s biggest and newest giants. According to the network, Puppy Bowl viewership added more than four million additional viewers last year, thanks to Discovery’s acquisition of WarnerMedia in 2022.
For the first time, Puppy Bowl XIX was simulcast on Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, HBO Max, TBS, and Discovery+. “There’s been a surge in viewership especially because we’ve got more people’s attention from all these different platforms,” Mr Lee said.
Animal Planet said it would not share the cost of producing the Puppy Bowl or the advertising revenue it generated. But the program has a high return on investment, said Mr. Doyle, now executive vice president at Hearst Media Production. Group. The first Puppy Bowl cost less than $100,000 to produce, he said. He estimated, “I’m sure it cost five times or more what we spent on it.” “But it’s probably bringing in 50 times more money.”
‘Most Valuable Pup’
Puppy Bowl crew members past and present offered various theories for the program’s continued dominance: it appeals widely across all age groups; This is easy to see when making chili. Your favorite team may be out during the NFL playoffs, but it can’t miss out on a spot in the Puppy Bowl.
Then almost all of them came back to the obvious: people really like puppies.
Many visitors are inspired by puppy bowls to find one for themselves. Erica Proctor, 42, executive director of Green Dogs Unleashed, a special needs animal rescue center in Troy, Virginia, estimated that on the day of Puppy Bowl she gets about 100 emails asking about adoptions and training. He said, after this the applications will increase.
Green Dogs Unleashed, which has been sending dogs to the Puppy Bowl for the past 10 years, is responsible for the expense of transporting the puppies to Glens Falls and housing them there. It was a challenge in the beginning, Ms. Proctor said, but it “comes back to us tenfold in the awareness it brings to the country of our special needs animals.”
The people who are on set filming the Puppy Bowl do not necessarily know its winner. Producers depict an ending to the film in which each team wins, and the winner is determined in postproduction.
This means that Mr. Schechner cannot help those who send him direct messages on social media every year asking for tips that can help them bet on the outcome of the game. Other common prop bets relate to the point spread of the final score and the age of the MVP (Most Valuable Pup).
Despite appearances, producers insist that Puppy Bowl glory is earned on the field, not written by its human observers.
“You have to compress it to make a story that’s understandable and fun,” said Joe Boyle, senior vice president of production and development at Discovery, “but we follow what actually happened.”