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It’s Super Bowl Sunday — and while you might be enjoying relaxing on the couch, snacking on chips and maybe placing a bet, billions of dollars in big business are flowing through all things Super Bowl-related. game.
Fox (FOX) (NASDAQ: FOXA) is showing this year’s contest (starting at 6:30 p.m. ET, but the all-day broadcast begins) on its stations, website and app.
Currently, the Super Bowl rotates between three broadcasters each year — CBS, NBC and Fox, with ABC ( DIS ) set to join in a few years — and the game naturally brings in a fortune in advertising dollars in the lucky company’s first calendar quarter. . In a long-term trend of declining ratings, however, is it still such a lucrative hit?
You bet. (Speaking of which, you can actually bet on Super Bowl advertising via the Molson Coors ( TAP )/DraftKings ( DKNG ) promotion.) First, even amid the ratings decline, it’s still the most-watched program of the year in North America.
What’s more, NBC ( CMCSA ) set a record advertising rate of $7 million per 30-second spot for last year’s game, where ratings jumped 14% from the 13-year low set in 2021.
Fox (FOX) (FOXA) exceeds that rate this year. It sold off its ad inventory a little later than it would have liked — thanks to the “implosion” of some crypto advertisers after a heavy presence at last year’s game — but most of the 30-second spots went for between $6 million and $7 million, with a few spots going for more than $7 million each.
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch omitted during the company’s earnings call last week that “we’re only going to write less than, gross, about $600 million in revenue next Sunday.”
“We’re sold out. It’s going to be a record Super Bowl for us, both in terms of total revenue and obviously in terms of what we get for each seat,” Murdoch said.
That comes despite a challenging economy that had some advertisers questioning whether to shell out $7 million this fall, Fox said. But Murdoch says, despite talk of an overall weak market, “we really don’t see that. We see that advertising is something fluid and the money is late.”
Especially for those who only watch ads: What will you get? Not cryptocurrency, though, but tech (especially service websites like DoorDash ( DASH ), Uber Eats ( UBER ), and Booking.com ( BKNG )); definitely movies/streaming services including Paramount+ (PARA) (PARAA); and snacks including Pringles and Popcorner (PEP). Oh, and alcohol: Anheuser-Busch ( BUD ) is the top advertiser, with a full three minutes, but is giving up its exclusive license to advertise alcohol, leaving room for Molson Coors and Heineken ( OTCQX:HEINY ) as well as Diageo ( DEO and Rémy Martin (OTCPK:REMYY).
(Check out the wide variety of companies, including betting names, for which ads may attract attention in the coming days.)
And if you’re disappointed that Tampa Bay QB Tom Brady missed this year’s Super Bowl (and then retired again), you can always go see Paramount’s 80 for Brady instead of that.