The Steep Price Of Advertisement: Here’s How Much Brands Spend for a Spot in the Super Bowl

FootballJune 5, 2021

The Super Bowl is one of America’s largest and most-anticipated events.

With millions of people, both football fans and regular citizens, tuning in to the sporting spectacle, it’s no surprise that brands are willing to spend the big bucks in hopes of drawing the attention of this large audience. But how much money does it really take to get a slot at the Super Bowl?

Expensive slots

A reported 100 million people were reportedly expected to watch the Super Bowl in 2019

According to records from the previous year, CBS charged a whopping $5.25 million for a 30-second advertisement slot during the televised championship game.

Broken down further, that translates to about $175,000 per second of exposure. This price is reportedly a record high. In comparison, the 2018 Super Bowl’s host network charged $5.2 million for the same amount of time.

The increase is more apparent especially when considering the rates in the 2008 edition of the event where the going rate was $2.69 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.This despite the dip in viewers of the sporting event in the previous year.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

The NFL began hosting the Super Bowl more than 40 years after its founding

Going back in time even further, the difference between previous decades’ rates to today’s becomes more noticeable. During the first Super Bowl in 1967, advertisement spots only cost up to $42,500.

The numbers only climbed up to the millions almost 30 years later in the mid-90s. At the time, ads were sold for $1.15 million. Rates only went up from there.

Come the new Millenium and costs jumped by more than 30%. This was attributed to the willingness of internet startups to spend big on advertising.

Biggest Spenders

Budweiser’s parent company is the league’s official beer sponsor

The popular beer brand Budweiser is one of the event’s biggest spenders. It reportedly bought a record six minutes and 25 seconds of ad time which cost the company a whopping $34 million.

While they don’t come quite close to this feat, other beer brands have been known to spend a lot of dough for a spot. For example, Heineken splurged over $4 million just to hire actor Brad Pitt to appear for a commercial in 2005.