Commercials in February’s Super Bowl are pacing ahead of schedule and attracting record pricing, according to Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch.
Last year, NBC Sports sold 30-second commercial for as much as $6.5 million.
Speaking on Fox’s fourth-quarter earnings call Wednesday, Murdoch said that the despite the “chatter around advertising headwinds … we are currently not seeing an adverse advertising impact on our business.”
During the upfront market, advertising commitments for the 2022-23 broadcast year were up 15% from last year’s upfront, Murdoch said, with price increases on a cost-per-thousand viewer (CPM) basis in the high single to the low-double-digit range.
Fox increased the amount of inventory it sold in the upfront from the traditional 70% range to the low to mid 80% level, Murdoch said, in order to gain more certainty.
He said the upfront totals exclude the Super Bowl, but noted that Fox sold more advertising for its Sunday NFL games this year than it did last year for its Sunday and Thursday Night Football games combined.
Murdoch said pricing was particularly strong for cable, as sellout levels increased for Fox Entertainment and more incremental dollars went into the Tubi streaming service.
At Fox’s local stations, base advertising sales were stable, Murdoch said, with the company seeing a return to growth in the auto category.
“This provides a good foundation for the upcoming political cycle,” Murdoch said. “In the fourth fiscal quarter, political ad sales were three times larger than during the last presidential election in 2020 — a record year for political advertising.”
He said this year’s midterm elections are “certain” to surpass the 2020 political revenue generated by the Fox stations.
“We are seeing an unprecedented wave of political spending, which accelerates as we head toward November,” he said. ■
