Fox is closing in on selling out its Super Bowl ads before the end of summer

Fox Corp. is about to score a huge touchdown for Super Bowl LIX, even though kickoff is just under half a year away.

The company, which will broadcast the 2025 Super Bowl from Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Feb. 9, has sold out all but a handful of commercial inventories, according to three media buyers familiar with recent negotiations. These executives suggest that Fox use the high demand for the event to charge more than $7 million for a 30-second commercial and insist that anyone who wants a spot on the Super Bowl advertising slate commit to an advertising package that also includes includes other Fox properties. seal the deal. One area of ​​interest to Fox sales executives, according to one of the buyers, is establishing ad support for Major League Baseball’s postseason broadcasts.

Such a move would largely cut off the remaining commercials from an important category of Super Bowl sponsors: unknown entrepreneurs who often go out of their way to win the Big Game to generate interest in under-the-radar products and services. In the past, these marketers have included companies like GoDaddy, a provider of back-end web services, or Farmer’s Dog, a maker of fresh pet food.

“Is there room for a bigger store that already has units” in the game? asks a buyer. “Yes. One-offs – no chance.” TV networks that broadcast the Super Bowl often seek a so-called “match” from advertisers, as part of an effort to weed out bidders who may not be as serious about participating and to gain more support for other programs.

Fox declined to make executives available for comment.

No TV network likes to announce a sale too early in the process. After all, a TV sales team can unexpectedly experience a reversal of fortune if the economy goes south. Most Super Bowl sales processes come with interesting hiccups, including pleas from advertisers who get cold feet because of the high price of sponsoring the event, or because they can’t come up with advertising that gives them confidence.

Still, the pace of the selloff appears to have accelerated, according to buyers, one of whom predicted that Fox could essentially declare that it has signed sponsors for all of its Super Bowl inventory by September. CBS, which aired Super Bowl LVIII this year, didn’t declare the event completely sold until last November. And as a warning, Fox saw strong demand for 2023’s Super Bowl LVII in the previous year’s “upfront” market, as TV networks tried to secure advance advertising fees for their next programming cycle. But concerns about the economy increased in the fall, and the network had to work for months to unload the last 5% of its Big Game inventory. Fox only declared a sellout a few days before the game.

And while more and more advertisers are diverting dollars from traditional TV, the Super Bowl is hard to ignore — even in an era when the NFL has increased its cheaper regular-season inventory through Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” and “Black Friday” franchises. games. According to Nielsen, an estimated 123.7 million viewers watched Super Bowl LVIII on February 11, when the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in a rare overtime segment. The CBS broadcast averaged 120.3 million viewers – the largest audience on any network for the event. Another 2.3 million viewers watched the Spanish-language broadcast on Univision, and 1.2 million watched a children’s version of the broadcast that appeared on Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite.

Demand for the next Super Bowl in 2025 is so high that Fox has gone to the NFL to seek possible approval for a “floating” commercial break, according to two people familiar with the matter, which could allow for more advertising . Fox did something similar for its 2020 broadcast of Super Bowl LIV, securing the league’s approval for an additional commercial break with two 60-second ads. Fox received approval after selling out its ad inventory and continuing to receive requests from advertisers interested in joining the game — something it will likely experience in the coming weeks.

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