Super Bowl LI XXXVIII in 2004, which also featured the New England Patriots against that season's NFC South champion Carolina Panthers. It was also the third time the Super Bowl has been played in Houston, with Super Bowl VIII in 1974 having been held at Rice Stadium. With the Astros baseball team reaching the World Series eight months later, Houston would become just the fourth city to host both the Super Bowl and Fall Classic in the same calendar year, following San Diego (1998), Detroit (2006) and Arlington, Texas (2011); and the first among the four to win the Major League Baseball championship.
Super Bowl commercials several advertising campaigns throughout each game, one of which has traditionally featured its mascots, the Budweiser Clydesdales. The Clydesdales were included in at least one Super Bowl commercial every year from Super Bowl IX in 1975 through Super Bowl LI in 2017. Budweiser's parent company Anheuser-Busch has been the most successful advertiser in the annual Super Bowl Ad Meter survey organized by "USA Today", having finished first on the survey fourteen times. When "USA Today" held an "All-Time Ad Meter" bracket tournament in 2014, two Budweiser commercials met in the finals; the winner was a 2008 ad spoofing "Rocky", which