Every year, brands scramble to secure an ad spot for the NFL’s biggest game of the season. But those Super Bowl commercial costs are no joke! We’ll get into exactly how much Super Bowl commercials cost below, but first, here’s a little background on this year’s Super Bowl ads.
The Super Bowl started in 1966 as part of a merger between the National Football League and the American Football League. It was originally titled the AFL-NFL World Championship Game until the Super Bowl named was adopted in the 1969 Super Bowl III. In the present day, the Super Bowl is annual final playoff game between the American Football Conference Champion and the National Football Conference champion. It’s historically been played on a Sunday from mid-January to late-February.
Of the NFL’s current 32 teams, 20—11 NFC and 9 AFC—have won the Super Bowl and 15—7 NFC and 8 AFC—hold multiple titles. The AFC’s Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots hold the record among AFC teams for the most Super Bowl titles at six each. The Patriots hold the record among AFC teams for the most Super Bowl appearances at 11. The NFC’s Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers hold the record among the NFC for the most Super Bowl titles at five each. The Cowboys hold the record among NFC teams for the most appearances at eight.
Since its creation, the Super Bowl is among the most-watched single sporting events on American television, and it is second only to the UEFA Champions League final as the most-watched sporting event worldwide. The seven most-watched broadcasts in American television history are Super Bowls.
But, let’s be real. While millions of NFL fans tune into the Super Bowl each year, many viewers watch just for the Super Bowl Halftime Show or they’re there to see what happens during commercial breaks. In 2021, Super Bowl ads took a hit due to the ongoing health crisis, as many big advertisers like Coke, Pepsi, and Budweiser pulled out from their regular ad spots. As a result, CBS reportedly took longer than usual to secure advertisers for this year’s game.
Still, that doesn’t mean that other brands didn’t sign up for their minute of airplay—they just had to pay a pretty penny! Keep on reading to find out just how much Super Bowl commercials cost for advertisers in 2023.
How much do Super Bowl commercials cost?
Jennifer Coolidge. Image: YouTube/e.l.f. cosmetics
If you’re wondering how much a Super Bowl commercial costs, here’s what you need to know. In 2021, the cost of a Super Bowl commercial started at $5.5 million according to AdWeek. CBS originally opened the bidding at $5.6 million, but it took two months longer than usual for their ad slots to sell out—so it appears that some companies, like Scotts Miracle-Gro, may have secured a deal to save around $100,000. This about mirrored how much Super Bowl commercials cost in 2020. At the time, ads cost brands upwards of $5.6 million—but this was a jump from costs in 2019, when Super Bowl ads cost anywhere between $5.1 to $5.3 million.
As for 2023, Statista reported that Super Bowl commercials cost advertisers $7 million for 30-second spots during the Super Bowl LVII broadcast. The site also cited a 2020 survey that found that 79 percent of Super Bowl viewers see the commercials as entertainment of their own right, while 71 percent reported that they enjoyed watching the commercials. Statista also reported that, during the 2019 Super Bowl, viewers spent 641 thousand hours watching Super Bowl commercials on YouTube, which was a 58 percent increase from the previous year.
“The fractionalization of attention because of streaming and social media makes the Super Bowl more important than ever,” Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive turned media consultant, told CNN Business in 2022. “If you’re in business with the NFL and you’re advertising during the Super Bowl, you’re a real player.”
Crakes added that there also examples of the Super Bowl “helping build brands,” not just promoting them. “Think about a company like GoDaddy. GoDaddy invested in the Super Bowl for years, did a lot of crazy things to get attention inside it, and it helped their business,” he said. “I think it’s a great investment, even at this price tag.”
Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, told CNN Business that the total commercials for 2022 amounted almost $500 million in ad revenue. “You’re likely looking at about 70 ads, so you’re getting pretty close to $500 million in ad revenue from the game for NBC,” he said. “And that, by the way, is just during the game. That doesn’t count before the game, after the game and all of the other opportunities there are to run additional advertising.” He continued, “$500 million is a lot of money for anyone, but in the world of media, Super Bowl spots are in a whole other level. That is why the NFL is such a valuable sports franchise, because there’s this ability to charge advertisers this much to be on these events.”
Calkins added that there are also “two big benefits” for networks like NBC, FOX and CBS to being in business with the NFL and broadcast the Super Bowl. The main benefit is the commercial revenue, which “NBC will use this opportunity to support the rest of their lineup” in promotions during and after the Super Bowl. “For NBC, the Super Bowl is an event that they can use to jump-start the rest of their lineup as they go into the spring and the rest of the year,” he said. “A number of years ago, people said, ‘the Super Bowl is going to fade away. It’s getting unsustainable.’ It’s completely the reverse. The Super Bowl is more and more important because it’s a shared experience. And what’s interesting is a lot of people watching the Super Bowl don’t even really care about the game. They’re watching the ads.”
Paul Mirshak, who a professor sports marketing at Champlain College in Saint-Lambert, Quebec, told CBC in 2022 about why sports events like the Super Bowl is so valuable. “Sports is one of the few things on television where people actually watch live,” he said. He added that, while viewers now often stream their favorite television shows and don’t see traditional commercials, “the Super Bowl is an exception.” Peter Widdis, a professor in marketing and innovation at George Brown College in Toronto, Ontario, agreed. “You know that you’re going to reach an audience of 100 million people that are likely not going to click and change [the channel],” Widdis told CBC. Mirshak also added of the value of investing in a Super Bowl commercial “Yes, it costs $6 million for 30 seconds of your time. But when you factor in the large audience of about 100 million people watching this game, and when you do the calculation … it’s actually pretty good value,” he said.
He cited the 1984 Super Bowl, when Apple introduced the Macintosh (now known as the Mac) computer. “After the Super Bowl aired, they couldn’t keep computers on store shelves,” Mirshak said.
Image: Taylor Trade Publishing.
For more about the Super Bowl, football fans can check out When It Was Just a Game: Remembering the First Super Bowl
by Harvey Frommer. The best-selling book delves into the history of the first Super Bowl, which was originally known as the AFL-NFL Championship Game. (The term “Super Bowl” was coined only in its third year.) The debut game, between the winning Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs, was played in front of only 61,946 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum—an audience well below the stadium’s capacity. Harvey Frommer, a sports historian and reporter, puts the tale of that momentous game together using oral history, gathered by hundreds of interviews with players, coaches, media and spectators alike.
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