The NFL season begins one week from today, and the league's four major TV network partners "have already cumulatively sold" north of $2.5B in commercial time, according to sources cited by John Consoli of BROADCASTING & CABLE. Each one of the networks has "sold more inventory than last season, at higher prices, and that's despite advertisers having spent" some $1.2B on Rio Games coverage. Ad sales execs at CBS, Fox, ESPN and NBC "all agree that Olympic ad spending had no negative impact on NFL ad sales." The same execs said that Olympic advertisers who also advertise in the NFL simply "diverted money from non-sports entertainment programming." The networks' NFL ad sales are "even more impressive" considering the cumulative loss of about $150M in ad spending by DraftKings and FanDuel. Neither DFS company has "committed any ad dollars for this season so far, but the networks say negotiations are taking place and scatter ad packages from both could be worked out once the season starts." NBC Sports Exec VP/Ad Sales Seth Winter said, "The NFL continues to withstand the migration of viewers to other platforms away from television." Each one of the four networks said that new pharmaceutical advertisers also have "bought ad time in their NFL telecasts." Consoli noted while automotive ads "will again be a backbone category for NFL advertising on all the networks, other categories where companies have bulked up their NFL ad buys include telecom/wireless, insurance and financial, QSRs and retail." Walmart, which has advertised with the NFL before, has "increased spending for the coming season significantly." Buyers said that price increases compared to last season "got hikes" of between 7-9%. Winter "put the NBC price hikes at 'low double-digits'" (BROADCASTINGCABLE.com, 8/31).
