The hottest ticket in town for advertisers is officially sold out. Fox said Monday that all of its in-game ads for Super Bowl LVII have been sold out.
The big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles happens on Sunday.
The Super Bowl is advertising’s biggest stage, with advertisers jockeying to get their products in front of the more than 100 million people who watch each year. Mark Evans, executive vice president of advertising sales for Fox Sports, said some ads went for more than $7 million for a 30-second spot. Most sold for between $6 million and $7 million.
Anheuser-Busch remains the largest advertiser with three minutes of national airtime. The beverage giant dropped its deal to be the exclusive alcohol advertiser this year, so Heineken, Diageo, Remy Martin and Molson Coors are also in the game. Other large categories of advertising include packaged foods like Doritos and M&Ms, movie studios and streaming services, automakers and tech companies, Evans said. Out this year: Crypto companies.
Last year’s Super Bowl was dubbed the “Crypto Bowl” because four cryptocurrency companies — FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com and eToro — ran flashy ads. This was part of a larger effort by crypto companies to go mainstream with sports sponsorships. But in November, FTX filed for bankruptcy and its founder was indicted in a scheme to defraud investors.
Evans said that this year, two crypto advertisers had ads “booked and done” and two others were “on the one-yard line.” But once the FTX news broke, those deals were not completed.
Now, “that day there is zero representation in that category,” he said.
Evans said that most Super Bowl ads sold out much earlier than usual, with more than 90% of its Super Bowl ad inventory gone by the end of the summer, as established advertisers jockeyed for prime positions. But the rest of the spots sold slowly. Evans said this was partly due to the infighting of the crypto space as well as general advertiser concerns about the global economy.
Last year, NBC quickly sold off its ad space, saying an undisclosed number of 30-second spots went for $7 million, a jump to the $6.5 million for 2021 ads.
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