Four million dollars.  Certainly, that is enough money to buy a nice house, a car, retire comfortably, put your children through college, and see the world. It was also the price tag for companies to run a 30-second commercial on FOX, the network that aired Super Bowl 48. That’s a lot of cash for a game in which the Seattle Seahawks led for all but the first 12 seconds, and the opposing Denver Broncos trailed for 59:48.

Super Bowl 48 pitted the NFL’s top-ranked offense and defense against each other in a game that was predicted to be a battle of epic proportions. An estimated 111.5 million viewers tuned in to watch the big game, making it the most watched TV event in history.

“We were a little surprised, absolutely,” said Bill Wanger, executive vice president for programming and research at Fox Sports. “The blowout had some at Fox worried that enough people would tune out in the fourth quarter to ruin any chance at a ratings record. So when Percy Harvin ran the opening kickoff of the second half back for a touchdown to give the Seahawks a 29-0 lead, let’s just say we weren’t popping Champagne bottles,” he said.

The shockingly one-sided game reiterated the old football slogan, “offense draws crowds, but defense wins championships,” when the league’s top-ranking Denver Broncos offense failed to hold the lead at any point in the game over the league’s top-ranking Seattle Seahawks defense, scoring their only touchdown after giving up 36 consecutive points. Yet regardless of the crazy point differential, more than 24.9 million messages were posted on Twitter regarding the game, making it the most Tweeted about live event in history.

“Big-event television is a great way for people to have a communal event, to talk about it socially and to talk about it as a group,” Wanger said. “You see that in the Super Bowl numbers of the past four or five years. They’ve just gone up to a different level.”

According to the National Federation of Retailers, or NRF, viewers of the Super Bowl spent an average of $68.27 on game-day food, team clothing, decorations and televisions. The NRF estimates total spending hit $12.3 billion once everything was all said and done.

Hopefully all of that money spent on a Super Bowl that looked more like a game of Madden on the easiest difficulty was worth it to the people who spent it.