Unsurprisingly, commercial inventory at the upcoming Super Bowl is pulling in eye-watering sums of money for Fox Sports.
The network has reportedly sold a double-digit number of 30-second spots for more than $8 million a pop according to Mollie Cahillane of Sports Business Journal. That figure far exceeds the average price of a 30-second spot at last year’s Super Bowl, which CBS sold for around $7 million each.
Not all advertising inventory was sold at the $8 million level; Fox has yet to reveal overall ad revenue for this year’s Super Bowl. But the number of spots sold at that price would seem to indicate demand for commercial space during the Big Game was higher than previous years.
Per Cahillane, Fox announced in November that it had officially sold out of advertising inventory for the upcoming Super Bowl. Around 80-85% of those slots had been sold by June during the company’s “upfront” presentation to advertisers.
Part of what allowed Fox to sell so much inventory at a high price was the fact that an abnormal number of advertisers actually dropped out of their original agreements, allowing the network to resell those spots at a higher price. One notable advertiser to drop out of this year’s Super Bowl is State Farm, who pulled its spot earlier this month after being the subject of widespread criticism in the aftermath of the Los Angeles wildfires.
According to SBJ, close to 10 advertisers dropped out of this year’s game. Luckily for Fox, demand was so high that they had advertisers already waiting in the wings if other companies decided to drop out.
“What was unique to this Super Bowl, or this marketplace, was we had a lot more people that weren’t in the game at all, all of a sudden be like, no, no, I have to get in the game,” Fox Sports ad exec Mark Evans told SBJ.
Two years ago — when Fox aired the same matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl — the network hauled in nearly $600 million in ad revenue. Expect that number to increase this time around.
