Written by: methodshop
on January 28, 2009.

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To the network with the Super Bowl, every matchup is intriguing.

Tuesday, NBC’s Al Michaels suggested “the excitement is building” for Sunday’s game partly due to the alluring mystery of the Arizona Cardinals, whose mystery was enhanced by not having been deemed worthy to appear on NBC’s prime-time Sunday regular-season games.

But when it comes to TV ratings for the Woodstock of Corporate America, the teams involved don’t seem to matter. Only once since 1971 — in 1991 — has the game averaged fewer than 40% of U.S. households. And NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol on Tuesday noted that “unbelievable” consistency makes the Super Bowl an anomaly: “It’s the last remaining event in all of American television that does not guarantee a rating” to advertisers.

Still, advertisers buy in, partly because of the publicity value that can come immediately — AOL says its online poll drew 40 million streams of Super Bowl ads after last year’s game — or in the long-term: Viewers can already log on to cbs.com/superbowl to watch and vote for old ads that will appear on CBS Saturday on the ninth annual Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials.

The cost of 30-second Super Bowl TV ads have steadily risen since Super Bowl I, when the list price for NBC was $37,500 and CBS, also carrying the game, charged $42,500. (In today’s dollars, says Sports Business Daily, that translates, respectively, to $238,501 and $270,301.)

But not many advertisers pay the widely-publicized list prices. Ebersol, saying NBC has sold 94% of its game ads, says only a dozen spots sold for the $3 million list price.

Selling the six-hour pregame show, can be tougher — but offers plenty of opportunities for network cross-promotion. Sunday, NBC will have Today weatherman Al Roker interview celebs — expect a few with tie-ins to NBC — at an on-site “Super Suite.”

“You could break down the game with telestrators for five hours and my mom and dad would watch it, but that’s about it,” NBC pregame analyst Cris Collinsworth said. “And they’d only watch half. We could talk football all day, but we have to be better than that.”

P.S.

Ebersol on Tuesday reiterated he won’t replace game analyst John Madden during NBC’s NFL deal. Madden repeated he has no plans to retire. But if Madden did, says Ebersol, he’d likely be replaced by Collinsworth.

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