Fox has sold off the last of its available in-game commercial units for Super Bowl LVII, but a few spots immediately before and after the NFL title tilt remain available for marketers looking for a zero-hour deal.
According to Mark Evans, executive VP of ad sales at Fox Sports, the last unit set to air during the Feb. 12 Chiefs-Eagles showdown was booked late last month, effectively bringing a close to the multimillion-dollar Super Sunday selloff. Fox had sold multiple in-game spots for $7 million a pop or better, with the average rate landing somewhere between $6.6 million and $6.7 million.
Two 30-second units are still up for grabs in the pre-kick segment, a 10-minute interval that airs just before the game gets underway, while a 45-second opportunity awaits a buyer in the post-game show. A year ago, the pre-kick averaged 78 million viewers on NBC, while some 54.1 million viewers stuck around for the postgame coverage.
Fox had sold 95% of its Super Bowl inventory before the season began, but a subsequent slowdown in the ad market and November’s cryptocurrency meltdown conspired to put a couple of in-game spots back into circulation. “With crypto, a few units went away because the company went away,” Evans said. “Things went sideways for a bit and some [reserved] units went into resale. If that hadn’t happened, we would’ve been sold out in September, October.”
Among the brands that backed out of their Super Bowl plans before making an official buy with Fox was the crypto exchange OKX, which had planned to air a 60-second in-game spot. Crypto on the whole reversed course in the wake of FTX’s spectacular flameout, as exchanges that had committed to the Big Game asked Fox to put their reserved units back on the market.
Thus, there will be no reprise of last year’s so-called “Crypto Bowl,” in which four exchanges had snapped up $54 million in ad placement. In a sense, last year’s show of irrational exuberance was reminiscent of the 2000 “Dot-com Bowl,” although on a much smaller scale. That year, 17 Internet startups accounted for nearly 40% of the paid ads that ran in Super Bowl XXXIV; by the time Super Bowl XXXV kicked off 364 days later, only three dot-coms had booked a return engagement. (Little wonder—seven of those 17 companies had already gone out of business.)
Interminable supply-chain disruptions and fears of a general economic collapse presented some challenges to the autumn sales effort as well. “In the fall, we heard a lot of variations on ‘I need to get one more inflation report in before I can get a green light for this,’” Evans said. “Understandably, there was some skittishness in the market, but I can now say that we are in the very fortunate position of being officially sold out.”
Evans and his team are also selling futures in the sweet chaos of a potential overtime period. Back in 2017, Fox had the good fortune of being the first (and only) network to host a Super Bowl that was tied at the end of regulation. Having set up a number of conditional OT deals during the run-up to that year’s jaw dropping Falcons-Patriots game, Fox was able to take in an additional $20 million in fifth-quarter ad revenue, on top of what was already a $400 million night. (The network would have generated an even bigger haul if it hadn’t taken the Pats just nine plays to find the end zone.)
All told, fans can expect a fairly typical Super Bowl load, with beer perhaps being the sole outlier. In short, the broadcast is going to be awash in suds, as brands such as Miller Lite, Coors Light and Heineken 0.0 look to take advantage of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s recent decision to dissolve its advertising monopoly. While the newcomers revel in their first shot at the Super Bowl in 34 years, A-B will still boast the most in-game real estate, flooding the zone with three minutes of national ad time for Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra and Busch Light.
Representing the harder stuff are Rémy Martin—in recent years, cognac has made a splash with the NBA—and Crown Royal. This is Rémy’s first national Super Bowl buy, and its 60-second spot features Serena Williams. The tennis legend will be downing doubles on Sunday, as she’ll also appear in Michelob Light’s Caddyshack-themed spot. Meanwhile, Crown Royal has enlisted Dave Grohl for its third-quarter buy, so there’ll be plenty of headache sauce to go around. (Crown Royal parent company Diageo is the NFL’s first-ever official liquor sponsor.)
While capital-s Sin will be much in evidence this Sunday— FanDuel and DraftKings are in the mix, as is the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne—Fox will balance the scales with a two- minute buy from the Servant Christian Foundation. The backers of the “He Gets Us” campaign have said that they plan to spend as much as $1 billion over the next three years in order to continue their national media blitz.
