Super Bowl 2023 commercial time nearly sold out by Fox

Super Bowl LVII is 95% sold out of advertising inventory, Fox announced today. The host of 2023’s Big Game also reported that it has sold 90% of inventory for the NFL regular season, which begins Thursday.

Mark Evans, executive VP of sales at Fox Sports, told Ad Age that compared to the nine previous Super Bowl broadcasts on the network, “we came out of the upfront marketplace more well-sold in the Super Bowl by a mile than we ever had,” with only a “handful of units” left.

A source close to dealmaking said that some 30-second units sold for more than $7 million, a new high for the Big Game. Brands that invested in major sponsorships across the Fox portfolio paid closer to low- and mid-$6 million price tags, consistent with last year’s pricing from NBC, the source added.

Fox follows a new paradigm for Super Bowl ad sales that multiple media buyers told Ad Age began last year when NBCUniversal set a more aggressive timeline for Super Bowl sales than any year previous. That means leaving the summer upfront haggle with few units left rather than being “happy if they were able to sell five to 10 Super Bowl units in the upfront,” said one buyer.

For Super Bowl 2022, NBCUniversal announced it had sold 85% of its inventory last July, while the previous broadcaster, Paramount, hadn’t reached the same goal until two months before kickoff. By September 2021, NBCU said it had just about five units left in the game.

“Historically, when you go back over the last multiple Super Bowls that [Fox has] sold, that marketplace typically really gets going in earnest once the NFL season kicks off; the bulk of the inventory was sold in September and October,” explained Evans.

“I think that there was a mad rush thinking that it was going to be sold out by June and everybody panicked,” said a second buyer. “Fox is in very, very good shape. And I say that not because they've told me that, but because when I've gone to add and buy a unit, I can't find an acceptable position that I'm willing to accept.”

While the 2022 game notably saw an uptick in fledgling  categories, namely crypto and sports betting, Evans said next year’s commercial breaks “will look a lot like it has in years past.”

“The crypto category, in particular, is in a very different place this year than it was last year,” said Evans, referring to the market downturn. “But, whether it's autos, streamers, studios, the telcos—those guys are all still supportive. You will see some new individual clients, but not a massive influx of any new categories like we've seen in the past.”

One major departure for the game, which airs Feb. 12 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, is the competition for beer brands after AB InBev relinquished exclusivity for the category after 33 years. Evans said the brand, whose contract had previously extended to the upcoming game, sold two units back to Fox in exchange for surrendering the deal.

Read more: AB InBev drops Super Bowl ad exclusivity

“We jumped at that opportunity,” said Evans. “And since that became public, as you might imagine, multiple other players who have been looking to get into this game for many, many years have challenged their creative agencies with coming up with some phenomenal creative to break through and do things differently. And it's been a very active category for us. So you will see advertisers other than Anheuser Busch in the Super Bowl for the first time in decades.”

Molson Coors announced in July that it would run an ad in the Big Game, purchasing 30-seconds of commercial time.

Fox also described great enthusiasm from advertisers for its regular NFL season, which airs its first games on the network this Sunday. Inventory for high-viewership times, such as Thanksgiving and the NFC Championship in late January, is down to single-digit availability. Evans said that Fox struck deals with 28 first-time NFL clients, which equates to over $100 million for Fox’s upfront. The season also saw double-digit increases in volume from clients in the travel, pharma, dining (both casual and quick-service), entertainment and alcohol categories.

“You’ve got a lot of eyeballs that are quite frankly migrating to the SVOD world,” said Evans. “The non-advertiser-supported world is where a lot of these eyeballs have gone over the past five years, so there's a limited supply of major events where if you're launching a product or launching a new company and you need to aggregate the masses quickly, live sports and the marquee events within live sports are unquestionably the best place to do that.”