Why the Super Bowl will never be later than 6:30 ET

A lot of real football fans always clamor every year for the Super Bowl to be at 8:30, when most Sunday night games are during the regular season. This especially happens to fans on the West Coast, since the game starts at 3:30 for them. The whole nation will probably be a little surprised when the first half is sunny in two years at Levi's Stadium. But the Super Bowl will never be later than 6:30 ET for reasons of television ratings. While the game ended before 10 ET this year, and was decided around 9:00 when the Seahawks were up 36-0, most years it ends between 10 and 10:15 ET (and last year it went to 10:44 ET due to the power outage delay). Imagine if this whole schedule was shifted by 2 hours. The game would usually end around 12:15am (as one Sunday night game, Denver at New England, did this past season) or later, on a night when people have to go to work or school the next day. Why does this model work for the NFL in the regular season but not in the playoffs? For the Super Bowl, the majority of people watching are not football fans. We can assume a maximum of 50 million football fans in America since AFC and NFC Championship viewership in the past few years has been between 45 and 50 million. The Super Bowl has upwards of 105 million viewers on a yearly basis. If the Super Bowl started at 8:30 ET, halftime would end around 10:30 ET, and most non-football fans would go to sleep at this time, especially if the game were a blowout as this year's was, and the Super Bowl would lose half its viewers. This is why the NFL will never schedule a Super Bowl later than 6:30 ET, even if it means a sunny first half from 3:30-5pm in Santa Clara in 2016.