It’s frowned upon when NFL players complain to referees. But at least they don’t urinate on it.
The same can’t be said for the contestants in the Puppy Bowl, Animal Planet’s dog football game that takes place in October but only airs on the afternoon of Super Bowl Sunday.
The event’s referee, Dan Schachner, stays prepared for all eventualities by keeping five identical uniforms in his locker room so he can change into clothes in the event of an accident. Mr Schachner, 49, admitted he had been lax in imposing penalties for “premature watering of the lawn” since he began putting the game on the line in 2011.
“I don’t automatically grab the flag,” he said. “We have a game to play.”
This year’s Puppy Bowl, which will be televised Sunday at 2 p.m. Eastern, is the 20th edition of the event, a milestone for a program that began as a tongue-in-cheek report on puppy playtime before transforming into a counter-programming juggernaut.
The three-hour skirmish over a football-shaped chew toy has been on the air 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 do not have opposable thumbs. They fall asleep at the 20 yard line and sometimes try to bathe in the water bowl. They are particularly bad at determining when to go for a 2-point conversion.
It takes over 100 crew members and 200 bags of poop to get the puppies into a semblance of a football game. “The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade requires just as much coordination,” said Howard Lee, president of Discovery Networks, owner of Animal Planet.
In an interview, Mr Lee described the program as a call for pet adoption, cunningly disguised as a football match. According to Animal Planet, all 1,298 dogs who performed at previous Puppy Bowls were adopted. The event leads to renewed interest in shelters whose puppies enter the field, even though those playing the game have typically been adopted by the time it airs.
The 131 members of this year’s roster were selected through an online casting process this summer and came from more than 70 shelters and rescue centers across the United States. All were between three and six months old.
As in the NFL, there were high-profile hopefuls: Levi, a 72-pound Great Dane, was the biggest puppy to ever compete in the event. Bark Purdy, a Chihuahua mix, shares a name (and perhaps his agility) with the San Francisco 49ers quarterback.
In October, the draft picks were transported to a hockey arena in Glens Falls, New York, which had been outfitted with a 28-foot-long AstroTurf field. The game was filmed for a week to allow the puppies to get enough hydration and naps. The producers then removed all the slow periods from the game.
To avoid injuries, smaller breeds like dachshunds and pugs competed against each other in the first half, while huskies and bloodhounds came in for a more muscular second half. (In Mr. Schachner’s experience, smaller breeds are more likely to “evade defenders” and “break tackles.”) Puppies from two teams — Team Ruff and Team Fluff — scored touched while carrying chew toys into either end zone.
Victoria Schade, the on-set trainer, benches the dogs when they look overwhelmed. During her 18 years of working on the Puppy Bowl, she perfected her technique for getting dogs to look up patriotically during the national anthem: dangling treats above their heads.
“Freeze-dried chicken, freeze-dried liver, freeze-dried cheese: It’s going to give your Puppy Bowl a performance worthy of the name,” Ms. Schade said.
“Why do we work so hard? »
The first Puppy Bowl, which aired in 2005, was more of a pickup game. The network’s general manager had asked Animal Planet producers to come up with some sort of counterprogramming for the Super Bowl, said Margo Kent, who was then the network’s executive producer.
The task seemed impossible. “We used to joke around and say, ‘Why do we work so hard?’ “, Ms. Kent said. “Let’s just put the puppies in a box and point a camera at them.”
They tried it on a Discovery soundstage in Silver Spring, Maryland, with a few dozen dogs from local shelters. The cameramen filmed behind a layer of clear Plexiglas, which had to be wiped down frequently because the puppies kept pressing their wet noses into it.
“We couldn’t believe how well it worked,” said David Doyle, who was vice president of production and development at Animal Planet at the time. The event has become “the darling of ad salespeople and senior management,” he added. “All of a sudden the question arose: How can we make money with this cool thing? »
During Puppy Bowl II, Subaru advertisements lined the stadium. A half-time kitten show was added, but it went awry when exploding confetti cannons caused all the cats to jump out of the film enclosure, Ms Kent said. (It was re-recorded, with the crew sprinkling the confetti by hand.)
Scorekeeping and uniforms were added in Puppy Bowl XI, and a sloth was introduced as an assistant referee three years later. With each flashy addition, the Puppy Bowl also devoted a greater share of airtime to encouraging viewers to adopt pets, including senior dogs and puppies with special needs.
If the event is good for puppy adoption, it could be even better for Warner Bros. Discovery, one of the biggest and newest giants in the entertainment industry. Last year, Puppy Bowl viewership added more than four million additional viewers, according to the network, thanks in part to Discovery’s 2022 acquisition of WarnerMedia.
For the first time, Puppy Bowl XIX was simulcast on Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, HBO Max, TBS and Discovery+. “The audience jumped, partly because we got more eyes on 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 generates. But the program tends to have a high return on investment, said Mr. Doyle, who is now an executive vice president at Hearst Media Production. Band. The first Puppy Bowl cost less than $100,000 to produce, he said. “I’m sure it cost five times what we spent, if not more,” he speculated. “But it probably makes 50 times more money.”
“Most Precious Puppy”
Puppy Bowl team members, past and present, have offered various theories about the program’s continued dominance: It appeals broadly to all age groups; It’s easy to watch while making chili. Your favorite team may be eliminated in the NFL playoffs, but they can’t miss out on participating in the Puppy Bowl.
Then almost everyone came back to the obvious: people really love puppies.
Many viewers are motivated by the Puppy Bowl to seek one out. Erika Proctor, 42, executive director of Green Dogs Unleashed, a special-needs animal rescue center in Troy, Va., estimates she receives nearly 100 emails on Puppy Bowl day asking for information on adoptions and training. This resulted in a slight increase in applications, she said.
Green Dogs Unleashed, which has been sending dogs to the Puppy Bowl for 10 years, is responsible for the cost of transporting the puppies to Glens Falls and lodging them there. It was a challenge at first, Ms. Proctor said, but it “comes back to us tenfold in the awareness that it brings to the country of our special needs animals.”
Those who are on the set of the Puppy Bowl filming do not necessarily know its winner. Producers film endings in which each team triumphs and the winner is determined in post-production.
This means that Mr. Schachner cannot help people who send him direct messages on social media every year asking for advice that might help them bet on the outcome of the game. Other common prop bets involve point difference of the final score and the age of the MVP (Most Valuable Puppy).
Despite appearances, producers insist that the Puppy Bowl’s glory is won on the field and not scripted by its human overseers.
“It has to be condensed into an understandable, fun story,” said Joe Boyle, senior vice president of production and development at Discovery, “but we follow what actually happened.”
