With the NFL ad sales market in full swing, buyers and networks are locked in the inevitable whisper campaigns to either drive up or down the perceived market price of commercial units, with the Super Bowl taking center stage.
Tony Taranto, CBS vice president of NFL sales, obliquely confirmed a story in Advertising Age, questioned by many media buyers, that Procter & Gamble paid $2.4 million for a prime ad slot in Super Bowl XXXVIII.
He also confirmed what buyers suspected, that similar positions can be had for less money and that the P&G spot was part of a much larger deal. With that kind of deal, networks can price particular units any way they want and then slash the prices of other components to balance it out. This practice creates the appearance that a high-profile property like the Super Bowl is commanding a certain price per unit, attempting to get other advertisers to bite at that rate.
Taranto would not comment specifically on Super Bowl pricing other than to say that the reported price for P&G's spot was for a "top-tier" position and that other spots "won't all go for that much." He also confirmed that it was part of a package that included both football and non-football inventory.
A wide assortment of media buyers said the Super Bowl market is nowhere near $2.4 million, even for the most desirable units.
One media buyer whose clients bought three spots for the upcoming game said he got a prime, first-quarter "A-position" (meaning the first to run during a commercial break) for a Hollywood studio for $2.2 million. That's a bellwether of the true high end, because studios typically pay the highest rates for Super Bowl spots. CBS originally asked for $2.5 million for the first-quarter unit, the buyer noted, but was quickly bargained down, as is typical in these negotiations.
This buyer said he picked up second-half spots for $1.7 million and $1.8 million apiece, and estimated that Super Bowl inventory was selling for about $100,000 more per unit than last season.
Still, the Super Bowl and NFL playoff and regular-season markets are generally said to be healthy by both the networks and the advertisers.
ABC, buoyed by the strength in general prime-time advertising, has been getting the largest price increases of any network, flirting with the high single digits on a cost-per-thousand-viewer basis, buyers said. Units in "Monday Night Football" are running from about $290,000 to $310,000, agency sources said.
Sunday afternoon packages are commanding a lower increase, in the mid-single digits, buyers said. CBS and Fox are tracking similarly in terms of price increase, with Fox coming off a higher base because of historically higher ratings for the NFC.
Units on CBS telecasts are said to be averaging a little more than $200,000 apiece.
Taranto said the network is closing in on having 50 percent of inventory sold and will break the 80 percent or 90 percent barrier soon, perhaps this week.
As evidence of the market's strength, he noted that CBS has sold all the allotted inventory for auto manufacturers — four units a quarter — in the playoffs.
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| Professional poker is finding a place at the table on both ESPN and the Travel Channel. |
POKER PAYS OFF BIG: Programmers are taking notice of professional poker as a ratings driver. ESPN recently renewed its deal to air the World Series of Poker. Discovery Networks' Travel Channel, meanwhile, is finding that its coverage of the World Poker Tour is the highest-rated program on the network. The championships of the year-old tour, which aired on June 25, scored a 1.2 rating, the second-highest rating ever for the channel. The World Poker Tour had a one-year, rights-fee-based deal with Travel Channel and is now seeking a renewal. World Poker Tour founder Steven Lipscomb said he has gotten inquiries from other networks including ESPN, but would prefer to stay with Travel Channel because the first year went well and because that network has given the tour a desirable, Wednesday night, 9 p.m. ET time slot.
BK HOOKS UP WITH ALL-STAR GAME: Burger King, a dabbler when it comes to advertising in major sports programming, has bought multiple units in Tuesday's All-Star Game on Fox. The buy, one of the last secured by the network, helped Fox sell out the game nearly two weeks in advance, the earliest ever for the network.
Other major advertisers include PepsiCo and its subsidiaries, Sony Pictures, Allstate, Anheuser-Busch, Ford Motor Co., Miller Brewing Co., Sprint and RadioShack.
Andy Bernstein can be reached at abernstein@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
