CBS in the Red Zone With Super Bowl Ad Sales

Although the 2012-13 NFL season isn’t set to kick off for another five weeks, CBS on Thursday said it is already nearing a sellout of its available in-game inventory for Super Bowl XLVII.

Speaking to investors during the media company’s second-quarter earnings call, CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves said the broadcaster had already sold “80 percent of advertising in the game,” adding that the pace puts CBS “well ahead of where we were three years ago.”

Two months ago, CBS had wrapped up approximately half of its in-game deals. The Super Bowl is scheduled to take place in New Orleans on Feb. 3, 2013.

While Moonves did not speak to the sort of rates CBS was securing in advance of the big game, media buyers suggest the network is trading 30 seconds of airtime at a record-high average unit cost of $3.8 million. This marks a 9 percent increase from NBC’s going rate of $3.5 million per spot in the most recent installment of the NFL title game.

While demand has been steady, no network cleared more in-game inventory from its plate as quickly as Fox did two years ago. In a series of deals that were hashed out concurrently with the 2010-11 upfront marketplace, Fox had already sewn up 80 percent of its Super Bowl XLV business by the first of June.

CBS continues to zero in on a summer sellout even as General Motors remains on the sidelines. Just days after the broadcasters presented their fall lineups to buyers and clients, GM in May announced it would punt away its annual investment in the Super Bowl.