Super Bowl Advertising Sells Out

It is never shocking to hear about the steep cost of Super Bowl commercials or to hear that the network televising the game is doing smashingly well at selling its advertising.

For the Feb. 5 game in Indianapolis, NBC said it sold all of its 30-second ads, at an average of $3.5 million, by Thanksgiving. That’s up from about $3 million last year when Fox carried the game.

At a $3.5 million average, the 70 commercials that run during the game would produce $245 million in gross revenue; subtract ad agency commission, and NBC would receive just over $208 million.

Then, add in the revenue from the six commercials that will run during halftime, and still more in the six hours of pregame programming, and you can see why networks love Super Bowls.

“We should shatter all prior records for that day,” Seth Winter, the senior vice president for sales and marketing for the NBC Sports Group, said last week.

NBC is also selling advertising on its live streamed broadcast of the game and on Super Bowl-related programming to be shown on the NBC Sports Network.

“Every advertiser in the Super Bowl has some participation across the board of the NBC Sports Group portfolio,” Winter said.

The ability to sell advertising at enormous prices for a game that will reach over 100 million viewers is one reason NBC agreed last month to a nine-year deal that starts in 2014 with the N.F.L. and will cost the network an average of $950 million annually. The contract guarantees NBC three Super Bowl broadcasts.