Growing up as a fanatical sports fan it has taken me a very long time — most likely too long — to figure out that not everyone cares about the Super Bowl. Maybe I was delusional, but living in a world where everyone didn’t bust a few capillaries in their eyes over teams they have no affiliation with just didn’t seem right to me. Since turning 24 years old I realized that there are people in this wonderful world that couldn’t care less about sports — I don’t know where to locate these people but I trust they exist.
Word on the street is the majority of Americans use the Super Bowl as an excuse to freeload at a friend’s house who bought a delicious food spread catered by Whole Foods and a keg of Yuengling. During the game they chow down on the brie and toss back some cold brews while waiting patiently for the commercials and the halftime show. These couch potato critics will spend the majority of the game dissecting 30 second commercials like curmudgeons complaining about an episode of SNL. “Yea, the first couple were funny, but the quality fell off sharply after that, I haven’t truly enjoyed watching it in years.”
Ironically enough the commercials they love will also be the spots that get overplayed and eventually become the ones they loathe within about a month. Nevertheless this football-oblivious contingent of the audience makes commercial time during the Super Bowl the most valuable each calendar year.
Deadline Hollywood reports:
Super Bowl ads sell out every year, of course. But today’s news that NBC has landed a record average price of $3.5 million for a 30-second spot in its February 5 broadcast of NFL’s championship game is notable because it reaffirms how important live sports on TV are to advertisers. And the Super Bowl is the biggest live event of all in an increasingly fractured media world, with a U.S. record 111 million viewers tuning in to last year’s game on Fox. That network received about $3 million per ad for the game between Green Bay and Pittsburgh, won by the Packers. The double-digit price increase for this year’s game in Indianapolis includes the $4 million one sponsor paid for a spot, an NBC spokesman told Bloomberg. The network also confirmed it has sold out its digital ads, after announcing last month it would live-stream the game for the first time. The Wall Street Journal writes that companies lined up for the 70 in-game spaces are perennials Anheuser-Busch InBev, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, with car makers GM, Volkswagen, Audi, Hyundai and Kia making up the biggest sector.
Meaning the Super Bowl generates $245 million in advertising revenue during a sporting event which lasts roughly 3.5 hours. To put it in perspective $245 million is more than two thirds the nominal value of Tonga’s GDP.
So remember when you’re hogging the bean dip on February 5th: the cost of each 30 second commercial could by you a lifetime supply of Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils or roughly 23,333 snow tires.
January 14, 2012 at 7:45 pm, JasonB said:
Buy not “by”