Super Bowl XLII, Sports Events Drawing Increased Ad Interest

Sports events, particularly February's Super Bowl on Fox, have been "seeing increased interest from companies looking to promote themselves during shows that will be watched live, rather than recorded and viewed later, sans commercials," according to Alana Semuels of the L.A. TIMES.  BBDO North America Chair & Creative Dir David Lubars, whose company has several clients, including FedEx and PepsiCo, that have bought Super Bowl ad time, said, "Sports is the only thing that's fresh."  Fox Exec VP/Advertising Sales Neil Mulcahy believes the writers' strike in Hollywood "could have been the final push" that incited advertisers to buy early for the Super Bowl.  Semuels notes the most-expensive 30-second spots for the '08 game sold for $3M, up from $2.6M in '07. The ads "likely to draw attention this year will star both celebrities -- Brad Pitt for Dell Inc. ... and Derek Jeter for PepsiCo Inc.'s Gatorade -- and nobodies, such as the band that wins Doritos' Crash the Super Bowl Contest and gets its song aired during an ad break."

MARKETPLACE: Mulcahy added that demand for ad time during MLB games and NASCAR events "is stronger than usual this year" at Fox, and prices for the net's BCS selection show in early-December were 15% higher than '06.  TNS Media Intelligence reported that "spending on TV sports was up 26% in 2006 from the previous year and 44% from 2003;" figures for '07 are not yet available. Additionally, SNL Kagan found that in '06 and '07, ESPN had "the largest market share of gross ad revenue of all cable networks, surpassing 2005 leaders Nickelodeon and MTV."  In fall '07, ratings for prime-time TV shows were "dismal or lower than advertisers had been promised by the networks -- another prop for live sports." Media buying agency Starcom Senior VP & Media Dir Sam Sussman: "There absolutely has been more money spilled over into the sports department" (L.A. TIMES, 1/11). 

SPENDING HABITS: About 43% of advertisers plan to increase spending on ESPN over the next 12 months, tops among basic nets, according to a survey of ad execs by New York-based Beta Research. The following shows the planned percentage increases on ad spending on each of the top-ranked basic nets over the next 12 months (Beta Research).

NET	% PLANNED INCREASE FOR AD SPENDING NEXT 12 MONTHS
ESPN	43%
TNT	39%
TBS	39%
Discovery Channel	38%
USA Network	37%
Comedy Central	33%
ESPN2	33%
HGTV	33%
Food Network	31%