Here's How Long You Can Expect The 2020 Super Bowl To Last

If it's the first weekend in February, then it's time once more for the Super Bowl. This yearly clash between the NFC and AFC champions has been a staple of wintertime viewing since the 1960s, but with the game itself jam-packed with commercials and pregame shows that run for hours ahead, not to mention performances by big-name artists, it's natural to wonder: How long is the 2020 Super Bowl?

The truth is, it's as long as you want it to be. Technically, kickoff happens at 6:30 p.m. ET on your local Fox station. But a quick trip to TV Guide's listings for Sunday, Feb. 2, shows Fox begins the hype at noon, with an hour-long recap of the 2019 football season titled Road To The Super Bowl. That's followed by live coverage of game day with FOX Super Bowl Kickoff: From Miami, starting at 1 p.m. ET, which morphs into four and a half hours of the FOX Super Bowl LIV Pregame special starting at 2 p.m. ET, ending at 6:30 p.m. ET when kickoff finally happens.

The Super Bowl pregame show isn't just football commentators chatting for the entire time, either. It features musical highlights of acts booked for the pregame show, including Pitbull, Dan + Shay, and DJ Khaled. The final half-hour will include the players taking the field to massive fanfare, as well as Demi Lovato doing the national anthem and Yolanda Adams singing "America The Beautiful."

But it's once the game kicks off between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers that it becomes a little hard to predict how long things will go. Technically, the game is scheduled to run until 10:30 p.m. ET, giving the teams four hours. (That includes playing the entire game as well as the trophy presentation.) But that doesn't mean things can't run long.

The longest Super Bowl game this century was in February 2013, Super Bowl XLVII, when the game lasted four hours and 14 minutes. (With trophy presentation, the Super Bowl didn't finish airing until nearly 11: 15 p.m. ET.) But that record comes with a caveat: The game, played by the Baltimore Ravens versus the 49ers, suffered a 34-minute power outage in the middle of the third quarter, which held everything up. Without it, the game would have run three hours and 40 minutes, a little on the long side, but solidly within the four-hour block of air time.

That was also the last time the 49ers were in the Super Bowl. Let's all hope their luck is a little better this time, and The Masked Singer Season 3 can begin at 10:30 p.m. ET as planned.