As the first overtime in Super Bowl history approached, a Fox executive sent out a text message that simply said, “It is pandemonium.”
Fox had sold out almost the entire overtime, saving two 30-second spots for advertisers that wanted to pay top dollar to get their message out and potentially start a bidding war. Fox did not guarantee positioning for the overtime spots that were sold, giving the network flexibility to put higher-paying advertisers in the overtime’s first position.
That resulted in a series of frantic phone calls. Ad sales executive Mark Evans described the suite where the Fox sales team and clients watched the game as akin to the pit of the stock exchange. From the time that the Patriots started their fourth-quarter drive to tie the game, to the game-winning touchdown, Fox’s ad sales team — Executive Vice Presidents Bruce Lefkowitz and Neil Mulcahy along with Evans and account executive Oleg Kab — were constantly on their phones, screaming to be heard over the roar of the crowd.
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The Patriots won the OT coin flip and, shortly thereafter, the game.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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Complicating matters was the fact that Fox could only use commercials that already had gone through its vetting process. Commercials that weren’t approved couldn’t make it to Fox’s air.
Within 10 minutes, Fox had scheduled eight advertisers. Only four were needed, as the Patriots ended the game with the only possession in overtime. Hulu, Sprint, Proactiv and SoFi had ads in that one break, each paying slightly less than the $5 million price tag for a 30-second spot.
Before the game, Evans described interest in buying overtime spots as “lukewarm” because the Super Bowl had never seen an overtime in its 50-year history.
“Now that this has happened, it will be much easier for NBC to sell it next year and CBS the year after,” he said. “I did not watch one play of the overtime.”
