Whether or not you’re a diehard Tremendous Bowl fan or, like me, desire watching excellent owls, you gotta admit: Tremendous Bowl commercials are fairly nice.
They’re additionally fairly costly. And nonetheless, Fox, which holds the rights to Tremendous Bowl LIX, simply bought all of the advert spots for the massive recreation on February 9, 2025.
Let’s check out what goes into the most costly TV advertisements on the planet, how a lot they’ve value all through the historical past of the massive recreation, and what manufacturers are actually getting out of them.
Desk of Contents
How a lot does a Tremendous Bowl advert value?
It’s a bit of tough to place a quantity to the price of a median, non-Tremendous Bowl TV advert, for the reason that numbers can fluctuate from a pair hundred thousand to a number of million {dollars}. However let’s give this query some context:
- In 2024 (Kansas Metropolis Chiefs 25 – San Francisco 49ers 22), U.S. and Canadian advertisers spent an estimated $69 billion on TV promoting. That’s the GDP of Costa Rica.
- The high 10 TV advertisers within the U.S. — we’re speaking manufacturers like Geico, Burger King, and T-Cell — spent an common of almost $7.5 million each week in 2023 (Chiefs 38 – Philadelphia Eagles 35).
- Upfront primetime advert gross sales — these are the advertisements you’ll see on main TV networks between about 8 and 11 p.m. or 7 and 10 p.m., relying in your time zone — have been projected to hit $19.12 million in 2024, which is definitely a slight lower from 2023.
Google’s 90-second “Loretta” advert from the 2020 Tremendous Bowl (Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31 – Chiefs 9) value the search behemoth $16.8 million ($20.5 million at the moment).
Drilling down a bit of additional, let’s have a look at the 5 most costly 30-second advert spots in the course of the 2020/21 broadcast tv season, in line with a Statista report:
- NBC Sunday Evening Soccer: $783,718 per advert
- Fox Thursday Evening Soccer: $624,626 per advert
- NBC’s This Is Us: $476,352 per advert
- NBC’s The Voice (Monday): $254,224 per advert
- Fox’s The Masked Singer: $225,764 per advert
Awards season can also be catnip for advertisers, with a 30-second spot in the course of the 2024 Academy Awards commanding a median of $2.2 million.
Amazon’s 90-second “Earlier than Alexa” advert from 2020 value $16.8 million ($20.5 million at the moment).
In 2025, 30-second Tremendous Bowl advert spots bought for about $7 million a pop. That’s almost 220% greater than a spot on the Oscars, and almost 800% greater than a daily season Sunday Evening Soccer business.
And that’s simply to air the advert — one time. It doesn’t account for celeb spokespeople, who’re making a cool $1 – $3 million every; premium advert company prices; manufacturing and post-production prices; even the advertising and marketing price range for the advertisements themselves.
In recent times, between 70 and 100 commercials have aired throughout every Tremendous Bowl recreation, including as much as round 40 minutes of commercials.
In 2012 (New York Giants 21 – New England Patriots 17), Tremendous Bowl advertisements value $3.5 million ($4.9 million at the moment) for a 30-second spot. Chevrolet and OK Go’s musical Rube Goldsbergian machine took 4 months of prep and price an estimated $500k – $1m to supply ($700k – $1.4m at the moment).
Some manufacturers snag embellished Hollywood administrators for the shoots, and whereas numbers are arduous to come back by, it’s secure to imagine that these administrators raked in some money:
- The Coen Brothers directed the 2017 (Patriots 34 – Atlanta Falcons 28) Mercedes advert, an homage to the counterculture biker movie Straightforward Rider.
- On the 1984 Tremendous Bowl (Las Vegas Raiders 38 – Washington, D.C. 9), a Ridley Scott-helmed Orwellian advert launched Apple’s first-ever Macintosh pc.
- David Fincher directed a swaggering Brad Pitt in Heineken’s “Beer Run” from 2005 (Patriots 24 – Eagles 21)
For those who’ve watched even one Tremendous Bowl, you in all probability know the manufacturers at play — normally the most important names in tech, meals, pc, and beer. Budweiser, Reserving.com, Dunkin’, and Volkswagen have been favorites of the 2024 Super Bowl.
Regardless that Google and Amazon share the title for most costly Tremendous Bowl advert ever, the King of Beers is the King of Tremendous Bowl advert spend. Anheuser-Busch spent an estimated $470.5 million on its wildly standard Budweiser advertisements between 1967 and 2020.
In 1999 (Denver Broncos 34 – Falcons 19), a 30-second Tremendous Bowl advert value $1.6 million ($3.1 million at the moment).
84 Lumber’s “The Journey Begins” spot value $16.2 million in 2017 ($20.1 million at the moment), making it among the many most costly Tremendous Bowl advertisements in historical past.
How A lot Can You Purchase With the Value of a Tremendous Bowl Advert?
Have hundreds of thousands burning a gap in your pocket however missed the deadline for a Tremendous Bowl LIX advert? Right here’s what else you would spend $7 million on:
* It’s unlawful to personal an owl as a pet within the U.S. Quantity primarily based on estimates from wildlife rescues and zoos that feed Nice Horned Owls.
What would not value $7 million is software program like Marketing Hub or our ad management software. You’ll be able to construct or handle your advert campaigns, whether or not you are focusing on soccer followers or excellent owl fanatics.
How Tremendous Bowl Advert Costs Have Modified Over Time
The primary Tremendous Bowl was performed in 1967 (Inexperienced Bay Packers 35 – Chiefs 10), and NBC and CBS charged manufacturers $37,500 for every advert, or about $360k in at the moment’s cash.
A decade later, in 1977 (Oakland Raiders 32 – Minnesota Vikings 14), manufacturers have been forking over $125k (about $675k at the moment). In 1987 (Giants 39 – Broncos 20), 30 seconds value $600k ($1.7m at the moment); by 1997 (Packers 35 – Patriots 21) it was $1.2m ($2.38m at the moment).
The Betty White Snickers advert from 2010 (New Orleans Saints 31 – Indianapolis Colts 17) is estimated to have value $4 – $5 million ($5.8 – $7.3 million at the moment).
One other decade, one other (million) greenback(s). In 2007 (Colts 29 – Chicago Bears 17), advertisements averaged $2.39m ($3.72m at the moment); in 2017, it was $5m ($6.5m at the moment).
Is a Tremendous Bowl advert price the fee?
The brief reply: In all probability not. Until you do advertising and marketing for a model with a positively monumental advertising and marketing price range, a single $7 million advert spot isn’t even on the desk.
However for manufacturers that do have that form of spend, the ROI may be vital, with Tremendous Bowl advertisements within the zeitgeist for a number of weeks earlier than and after the massive recreation. (I don’t watch the Tremendous Bowl — however I undoubtedly watch all of the advertisements as quickly as they’re on-line.)
And 123 million U.S. viewers watched Tremendous Bowl LVIII — second solely to the moon touchdown — and nearly a third of viewers say that the commercials are their favourite a part of the sport. Your $7m advert is getting a lot of eyeballs on it.
In response to Kantar research in 2021, “Tremendous Bowl advertisements delivered a median return on funding (ROI) of $4.60 per greenback spent, with many manufacturers within the double digits.”
Brad Adgate, described as a veteran media analyst, advised the New York Times in 2024, “On this period of fragmentation, the Tremendous Bowl is what tv was once.”
It’s arguably the one true mass-market stay occasion of the yr, reaching almost each demographic. Magnificence manufacturers like NYX and Dove have entered or re-entered the Tremendous Bowl advert recreation, placing the deceive anyone who thinks soccer isn’t for women, girls, or drag queens.
In a 2024 interview with NPR, Maria Rodas put the ROI of a Tremendous Bowl advert in easy phrases. Rodas is a advertising and marketing professor on the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a self-described “large fan” of Tremendous Bowl advertisements — in her family, speaking is allowed in the course of the recreation however not throughout commercials.
Rodas advised NPR, “[Super Bowl ads are] like mini-movies. [Advertisers] rent these large celebrities. The manufacturing worth is insane. And so swiftly, $7 million might be, like, the smallest of what they spend in comparison with the remaining [of the money] that they put into creating these.”
“To have this nearly undivided consideration supplies a tremendous alternative for entrepreneurs to create a story, to actually be capable to join at a a lot deeper degree with shoppers.”
Classes in Tremendous Bowl Advertising and marketing
That connection is vital whether or not you’ve a $7 million or $700 advert price range.
And loads of manufacturers have discovered alternatives to shelling out $7 million large ones.
So don’t despair for those who’re doing advertising and marketing on a modest and even shoestring price range — $7 million can purchase you 100+ million viewers, however no amount of cash could make up for bad marketing.
