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snap February cold
80% sold at a tad over $2M for a 30-second spot
By Kevin Downey
Amidst the seemingly endless news that the ad economy is in a slump there's one notable exception that’s getting little mention.
Advertising sales for Super Bowl XXXVI on Fox are going quite well.
Sure, demand for ad time is off a bit and prices aren’t moving up from last year, but the pace of selling is downright brisk, considering the $2 million-plus price tag for a 30-second commercial spot.
"A year ago I might have been disappointed, but based on three months ago I’m pretty happy at this point," says Jon Nesvig, president of national advertising sales at Fox Broadcasting.
"A lot of the key advertisers that want to lock up the first quarter and specific positions are already in and those positions are essentially gone."
Marquis sports in general have been holding up surprisingly well in the weak ad market.
NBC has sold at least 94 percent of spots for the Winter Olympics and is expected to eventually pull in over $700 million for the February games.
For the upcoming Super Bowl, Fox has sold about 80 percent of commercial time to advertisers like Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, and Levi’s for an average price of just over $2 million but with some going for as much as $2.3 million.
That’s a fairly steep drop from Fox’s original asking price of $2.4-2.5 million, but it puts the network about where CBS was at this time last year with sales for Super Bowl XXXV.
"There has been a lot of press interest and hype about those numbers moving up each year.
"The year ABC had it was a dot.com bubble year and that knocked it out of whack," says Nesvig, of Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000. "It’s now back to normal pacing."
Fox will probably pull in more than $200 million in advertising revenue for the day and will make more money on the game than it did in 1999, the last time the network had the Super Bowl.
"Given the current economic climate, Fox is doing well, and I think it is on target to achieve its goals," says Don Hinchey, director of creative services at the Bonham Group, a Denver-based sports consulting firm.
"I’m sure it had to scale back from previous expectations, though, in the wake of the downturn in the economy and the tragedy of Sept. 11."
Fox’s intake is especially notable, considering the overall ad climate.
Industry forecaster Bob Coen last week projected a 3.5 percent decline in ad-spending on the TV networks for this year.
Merrill Lynch and other forecasters have projected the first two-year ad-spending decline since the Depression.
"Advertising budgets are being cut a lot and broadly across industries and deeply, in some instances, within a particular firm," says Stephen A. Greyser, professor at Harvard Business School and a specialist in the business of sports.
"But the key here is that top-flight properties still have their cachet, they still have their audiences, and they still have what could be called their brand charisma.
"The World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics are clearly examples of what I would characterize as high brand-equity, high-charisma events."
Perhaps the only indication that Fox is having trouble selling ads this year is that pre-game coverage is being trimmed to five hours from the more than seven hours it had back in 1999.
Still, the Super Bowl is a huge money-day for Fox. The reason for that is fairly logical: The game is always the year’s most-watched TV program.
Last year’s game was watched, at least in part, by 131 million people. While the Super Bowl was one of the lowest-rated ever, fully 40 percent of the country was tuned in at any given time.
The game will give Fox a ratings boost for the season, but it’ll also give Fox a boost in the February sweeps, one of four months during the year when local affiliates use ratings to set advertising rates.
The Super Bowl will air in the sweeps for the first time ever. The football season was pushed back following the attacks of Sept. 11.
This also happened with baseball, and as a result Fox had the World Series on during the recently concluded November sweeps and came in second place behind NBC by only one-tenth of a rating point among 18-49 viewers
The Super Bowl will be followed in February by the winter Olympics, which will be aired on NBC.
And while the winter games are expected to pull in an average rating of 17.9, they are not expected to diminish interest in the Super Bowl or, perhaps more importantly, divert advertising dollars away from Fox.
"It doesn’t make any difference," says Greyser. "The Super Bowl is the one-game championship. It’s the seventh game in a World Series.
"What teams are in the Super Bowl and what the weather is like outside are both factors that affect the number of viewers. But the one-game professional football championship is something a lot of Americans want to watch. Therefore, a lot of advertisers want to be there."
December 10, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.
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