Super Bowl Sunday: a day to eat endless amounts of food and socialize with friends and family while watching one of the most viewed programs on television. While many people enjoy their favorite snacks and root for their favorite team, there is something occurring  most people wouldn’t think about during the biggest football game of the year: human trafficking.

Greg Albott, then Texas Attorney General, said in a 2011 interview with USA Today the Super Bowl had the greatest numbers of women being solicited for human trafficking.

“The Super Bowl is the greatest show on Earth, but it also has an ugly underbelly,” Albott said. “It’s commonly known as the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States.”

Websites that promoted human trafficking advertise specifically for The Super Bowl, stated a 2012 Forbes article. Backpage.com listed 1,000 advertisements during the Super Bowl soliciting “young” and “curvy” women, a quarter mentioned the Super Bowl in the ad. Some advertisements stated, “Super Bowl Specials” and “If your team lets your down, we will PEP you up!” according to Forbes.

This was not the first year human trafficking became an issue during the sporting event, however. During the 2010 Super Bowl, 10,000 prostitutes were brought to Miami, Forbes stated.

Some say there is no correlation between human trafficking and sporting events such as the Super Bowl and the numbers that have been reported are inaccurate. A report for the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women said people believe this to be true because sporting events are thought to be male dominated.

“Crowds are assumed to be predominantly male crowds demanding commercial sex and women are only visible as targets for men’s ‘demand’,” said the GAATW report.

Despite the disbelief in the issue, the FBI took precautions for Super Bowl 50 to ensure women who were being trafficked were protected during the event, CBS News reported.

Whether the statistics behind human trafficking during The Super Bowl are true and whether the number of women affected increase or stay the same, the issue that human trafficking might be occurring during one of the most watched shows should be brought to light. The women who are being trafficked will not speak out in fear of being harmed, so it is difficult to gather the accurate number of victims.

Taking the necessary steps to eliminate the problem of human trafficking altogether should be something that is combated on any given day, not just during The Super Bowl.