Inside the Revenue Generation and Marketing Frenzy of a Super Bowl

Photo via CBS

Every year, millions of Americans — and even more around the world — take time out of one particular Sunday to watch one of the most captivating, polarizing and moving spectacles in culture today: the Super Bowl.

Aside from the occasional Olympic Games or World Cup, it dominants the sports landscape around the world across all industries, too, from sports to entertainment to technology to finance. With kickoff just around the corner, let’s take a look at just how big of a deal (literally) the Super Bowl is from a business perspective.

Viewership

An estimated 103.4 million people watched last year’s Super Bowl on NBC. Consider, even though last year’s viewership was a seven-percent drop from the previous year’s broadcast (111.3 million), Super Bowl LII still ranks in the top 10 of the most-watched U.S. television broadcasts of all time.

During last year’s big game, NBC’s online viewership also averaged an additional two million fans throughout the course of the game on the NBC Sports app, NBCSports.com, and the Yahoo Sports app. With usually 180 countries broadcasting the game in 25 different languages, it has no shortage of a diverse audience.

TV Advertising Revenue

According to estimates by Kantar Media, NBC generated roughly $414 million in advertising revenue from last year’s game. In fact, NBC claimed that it had sold out of all the company’s Super Bowl commercial spots for last year’s installment.

Many viewers have grown accustomed to the Super Bowl being filled with dazzling commercials, often playing into the tongue-in-cheek humor that advertisers look to capitalize on with such a large, captivating audience.

READ MORE: How Music Will Play a Huge Role at the Super Bowl 

“For now, the Super Bowl is simply the biggest sports and entertainment event in the U.S.,” said sponsorship consultant Jim Andrews. “From an advertising standpoint, no other broadcast delivers the audience that the Super Bowl does. From a promotional perspective, there are few, if any, other platforms that can impact such a massive number of consumers. If you are a mass marketer that wants to reach the most people at one time, nothing else comes close.”

Last year’s broadcast contained a staggering 49-plus minutes of commercial time. In total, ads accounted for 22 percent of the total broadcast. There is a rhyme and reason, as NBC averaged over $5 million for every 30-second commercial spot that aired. To put this in perspective, since Super Bowl 36 in 2002, the average advertising cost has more than doubled over the last 16 years, rising nearly $1 million in the last four years alone.

Host City Economic Impact

Last year, over a 10-day period leading up to, and including, the Super Bowl, approximately $370 million in new net spending was generated throughout the Minneapolis area, where the Super Bowl and prior events were held.

The fanfare brought over 125,000 visitors to the city with 95 percent coming from outside Minnesota and six percent coming from outside the United States. Since 1988, Minnesota ranks fourth amongst Super Bowl host cities in terms of total gross economic impact. Much of the economic impact goes beyond the dollars and cents as fans travel from far and wide to take in the unique experience of this yearly spectacular event.

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“One of the trends happening in the sports industry is a focus on connecting with fans and sponsors with unique content using experiential marketing,” said Adam Grossman, CEO of Block Six Analytics. “The audience has some of its best opportunities to see things in the game, halftime concert, television ads, and the social media conversation that it has never seen before. The ability for the echo of the Super Bowl content to reverberate throughout the entire year is critical and makes the event an essential annual sports experience.”

Social Media

Planning social strategy around the Super Bowl is a huge advantage that businesses have to hone their brand. Content and direct advertising of Super Bowl ad campaigns tend to see a massive uptick in content posts beginning in January and surging throughout the postseason leading into the Super Bowl.

As social media continues to grow, brands will continue to hone in on an ever-consuming online audience.

READ MORE: Why Winning Should No Longer Be a Strategy When It Comes to Driving Attendance

According to Nielsen, there were 170.7 million interactions between the three big social media platforms regarding last year’s Super Bowl throughout the day as the game was being played out. And with brands such as Pepsi, Doritos, Dodge, T-Mobile, and Tide showcasing ads that combined for over 136,000 mentions over the course of last year’s Super Bowl, it demonstrates the role social media plays in broadcasting exposure to ever-engaging fans.

Betting

During last year’s Super Bowl LII, a whopping $158-plus million was bet in Las Vegas’ sports books. This paced ahead Super Bowl LI betting intake of $138.4 million within Nevada sportsbooks. During last year’s big game, Americans were expected to dole out $4.76 billion in bets. Granted, only three percent was actually bet within Nevada sportsbooks. The other 97 percent with local bookmakers and overseas sportsbooks.

Yet this year, with multiple states legalizing sports gambling, the sheer betting numbers will continue to grow. 

Player Payouts

It definitely pays to win big.

New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton’s recent attempt to fire up his team at the start of the playoffs involved displaying a staggering amount of money in the locker room.

From sources:

Yesterday, 4 armed guards entered the @saints locker room, with Coach @SeanPayton wheeling the Lombardi trophy on top of $225k in cash.

Coach then said: “Y’all want this???”

“Win 3 F’n games.”

The locker room erupted. $225k is each player’s SB bonus. #WHODAT

— Jon DeTrinis (@JonDeTrinis) January 9, 2019

This large sum, which was to the tune of $225,000, was stacked with so many dollar bills, it echoed scenes found within a Hollywood movie (plus the Lombardi hardware accompanying the stack of cash wasn’t bad either). In actuality, the payout for going all the way in the postseason hovers closer to $201,000 per the NFL’s latest collective bargaining agreement.

But, it even pays to lose on the big stage. With playoff bonuses coming with each victory throughout the playoffs, Super Bowl losers ultimately do not walk away empty-handed. After last year’s Super Bowl LII loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, every New England Patriots player still walked away with a $56,000 check, bringing their total playoff earnings to a cool $135,000.

There is no denying that the Super Bowl presents a multitude of revenue generation and added value exposure opportunities for companies and brands. As the spectacle continues to evolve and grow, the business of football will continue to eclipse the conversation and the market.