The Super Money Maker
Once a year people all over gather around the Tv to watch one of the biggest televised events in the world, you may be thinking this event is the Olympics or maybe even the super bowl. Well yes, it is the super bowl, the super bowl commercials. Every year companies from all over the world race to make one singular amazing commercial. In 2020 the average cost for one 30 second commercial was reported at a starting price of 5 million and it can even go up to 6 million dollars. You may be thinking 5 million dollars is absolutely crazy for a company to pay for one 30 second ad of theirs. Most people would think it’s a complete waste of money or that no one actually watches the commercials. Well, the ads are anything but a waste, the benefits from Super Bowl ads can rack up well over a year of increased sales compared to other sporting events or tv shows. Every year countless people tune in to watch whatever part of the show they enjoy the most, in a Nielsen poll they reported that less than half of the viewers will actually watch the game itself, 30% only watch the game for the commercial, 8% only watched for the halftime show, 20% watched just to party, and that leaves the actual Super Bowl viewers at 42%. These numbers do change depending on demographics, targeted age range, and environmental factors.
As you can see something that people usually don’t pay attention to is actually a bigger market than you would expect. In 2019 it was reported that people started viewing the much anticipated commercial lineup for the Super Bowl before the actual game aired. Like most Super Bowl fans you are probably wondering how something like this could even happen, how could Super Bowl commercials become so popular, competitive, and especially so expensive. Super Bowl commercials started off in 1967 it is reported that it cost $40,000 for a 30-second spot and by 2011 ads have reached the millions in price and cost $3million for 30 seconds each. The main reason why these commercials are so expensive is because of the 45-minute time slot the NFL has planned out for the game. That leaves the option of 1 minute or a 30-second commercial, which leaves roughly 45–100 ads in total. Now 100 commercials sound like a lot but in reality, that spot amount actually gets cut up as a quarter of the ads shown are NFL advertisements. That in reality leaves 25–75 spots for separate company ads. Having those lower numbers really boost up the competition to get our ad played. On average the Super Bowl will bring in $300 million in their costly advertising fees just through live Broadcasting but Broadcasting isn’t the only way they get a huge amount of money and viewers, the Super Bowl even gets attention online.
Many streaming services like Youtube typically offer the ads a few days before you would watch the game. Most companies start showing their ads before because of the high amount of viewing and shares they get. It is usual for these streaming sites to receive about 110 million views online and after the Super Bowl that number can increase to about 40 million more views. So you are probably wondering if all the online views do anything for the companies as well and, it does! Much like the previous statistic I mentioned above, online commercial views will also give those companies more sales and those streaming sites will also make more money. For example on Youtube, those super bowl ads could make $5,000 for every 1 million views the video may get. So if a video with all the ads had 200 million views you are looking at taking home around $100,000 or more! The Super Bowl is one of the most popular events to happen, it is no surprise that it is a huge moneymaker for everyone involved, in the last few years stocks have even started benefitting from the Super Bowl. In the stock market, they refer to it as the “Super Bowl Halo Effect” basically what this means is The Dow Jones average has a significantly higher chance to decline after what team wins The Super Bowl since the game happens in the first two months of the year investors can take advantage of this and use the Super Bowl Halo Effect. The investors buy and sell based on the game outcome, what companies are shown in the commercials, and much more. But the Super Bowl Halo Effect can benefit people who are unfamiliar with stocks as well since so much sponsorship goes on it gives companies a chance to grow a new audience as well as investors.