Fox Corp. is closing in on a huge Super Bowl 59 goal, even though the tournament is still less than half a year away.
The company, which is set to broadcast the 2025 Super Bowl from Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Feb. 9, has sold all but a handful of its commercial slots, according to three media buyers familiar with the recent negotiations. Fox is using the high demand for the event to command more than $7 million for a 30-second spot, the executives said, and is insisting that anyone who wants a spot on the Super Bowl’s advertising slate commit to an ad package that includes other Fox properties to close the deal. One area of interest to Fox sales executives, according to one buyer, is arranging advertising support for its postseason Major League Baseball telecasts.
Such a move largely closes the door on the remaining commercials from a large class of Super Bowl sponsors — the little-known entrepreneurs who often try to leverage their fortunes on the big game to generate interest in under-the-radar products and services. In the past, these marketers have included companies like GoDaddy, a back-end web services company, or Farmer’s Dog, a maker of fresh pet food.
“Is there room for a bigger store that already has units” in the game? One buyer asks. “Yes. One time — no chance.” TV networks that air the Super Bowl often seek what’s called a “match” from advertisers, part of an effort to weed out bidders who may not be serious about participating and gain more support for other shows.
Fox declined to make its executives available for comment.
No TV network likes to announce that tickets are sold out too early in the process. After all, the TV sales team could suddenly find itself facing a reversal in fortunes if economics take a turn for the worse. Most Super Bowl sales have interesting pitfalls, including petitions from advertisers who back out because the cost of sponsoring the event is too high, or because they can’t come up with an ad that gives them confidence.
Still, the pace of sales appears to be accelerating, according to buyers, one of whom predicted that Fox would actually announce that it had signed sponsors for all of its Super Bowl inventory by September. CBS, which aired this year’s Super Bowl LVIII, didn’t announce that the event was sold out until November of last year. In a cautionary tale, Fox saw heavy demand for the 2023 Super Bowl LVII in the “front” market the year before, when TV networks try to win advance advertising commitments for their next round of programming. But concerns about the economy spiked in the fall, and the network had to work for months to get rid of the last 5% of its Big Game inventory. Fox didn’t announce the sale until just days before the game.
As more advertisers shift dollars away from traditional television, the Super Bowl is hard to ignore — even in an era when the NFL has ramped up its cheaper regular-season inventory with Thursday Night Live and Black Friday games on Amazon. An estimated 123.7 million viewers tuned in to watch Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, when the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in a rare overtime segment, according to Nielsen estimates. The CBS broadcast drew an average of 120.3 million viewers — the largest single network audience for the event. An additional 2.3 million watched the Spanish-language broadcast on Univision, and 1.2 million watched the kids’ version of the broadcast that appeared on Nickelodeon and Nick at Night.
Demand for the next Super Bowl in 2025 is so strong that Fox has turned to the NFL for possible approval of a “floating” commercial break, according to two people familiar with the matter, that would allow it to accommodate more ads. Fox did something similar for its broadcast of Super Bowl 54 in 2020, getting the league’s approval for an additional commercial break that would include two 60-second ads. Fox got the approval after selling off its ad inventory and continuing to field requests from advertisers interested in getting into the game — something it seems likely to see in the coming weeks.
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