While the National Football League is currently in a labor lock-out, NBC isn’t worried over whether the next Super Bowl will happen or not. According to sources, nearly half of the slots for Super Bowl XLVI are taken with established clients looking to secure their traditional spots during the big game.
While it is unknown what, exactly, the rates are but it is believed that NBC is charging above the $3 million per 30-second spot that Fox asked for a year ago. Amazingly, the market is bullish enough that rates are expected to more than double their usual price-increase, up from $150,000 to $300,000.
Obviously with the ratings, we re going to push price, said Marianne Gambelli, president of network ad sales for NBC. But where it goes, I m not exactly sure yet. We have a lot of conversations going on and there s a lot of demand for it.
Automakers are expected to be a large buyers of ad time; last year eight automakers bought 20 in-game Super Bowl spots nearly a third of the broadcast s total ads. With last year’s Super Bowl smashing ratings records with 111 million total viewers and prime time television in decline, its easy to understand the appeal to advertisers.
Source: AdWeek
