This weekend is the big event for sports fans — Super Bowl XLIV. Last year’s TV audience was the largest ever at 151.6MM total viewers. According to the New England Sports Network this year’s super bowl “will be televised live to more than 180 countries and territories. It will be broadcast live in more than 30 languages, including 13 different languages from Sun Life Stadium”. All fine and good for traditional TV, but what about us online video fans? Well, according to Ryan Lawler of NewTeeVee, we’re out of luck. “This weekend’s big game between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts won’t be streamed live on the Internet.”

CSB will stream the pre-game, and there’s lots of sites where you can view the commercials via online video. According to Nielsen, the commercials are what a bare majority of us prefer anyway “Fifty-one percent of those questioned said they most enjoy the commercials that air throughout the game when compared to the Super Bowl game itself.” And, speaking of super bowl ads, CBS said it sold out it’s commercials as of Monday, with 30 second spots running from $2.5MM to more than $3 million for each; with a total of $200MM spent on Super Bowl ads.

So if you’re in the 51% majority, here’s a fun .tv site that bills itself as the “worlds largest archive of Super Bowl commercials” with 33 years worth of them — www.adland.tv. I may be boring, but my favorite commercial is still Apple’s 1984 ad.

And, speaking of .tv sites and Super Bowl advertising, Gatorade is showing live video via Ustream.tv of athletes testing at a performance lab in Miami in advance of  their Super Bowl marketing efforts. They are hosting pro football players for the rest of the week and inviting people to view the videos. It’s a great example of a major brand integrating video and .tv into their larger social campaign leading up to Super Bowl activity. It’s also a great example of how things you don’t normally associate with video (sports drinks) still work great for online video.

So who do I want to win the game? Well I was born in Baltimore, so I could never root for a team that was stolen in the middle of the night (watch a Barry Levinson movie and you’ll know what I mean). New Orleans has had it rough of late, so I think they deserve it. According to the latest Vegas spread; I’m continuing a tradition of rooting for the underdog.