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With prime time TV mostly in reruns due to the writers strike, advertisers are turning to sporting events - an area that has been seeing more advertiser action in recent months due to the rise of DVRs.
Sports are generally watched live rather than recorded and viewed later, so they are attractive to advertisers who are looking to avoid commercial-skipping viewers, the Los Angeles Times points out.
Super Bowl spots sold especially quickly this year, and the most expensive of them went for $3 million, up 15 percent from last year, while last year’s most expensive ads were up just 4 percent from the year before.
Playoff games are also fetching high prices, with divisional playoffs pulling as much as $750,000 and NFL Conference championship games bringing in $1 million.
Demand for ad space during baseball games and NASCAR events is stronger than usual this year, as well, and prices for college football’s just-completed Bowl Championship Series games were 15 percent higher than in 2006.
Overall, spending on TV sports was up 26 percent in 2006 from the previous year and 44 percent from 2003, per TNS Media Intelligence (which has not yet released 2007 numbers).
“Live sports are 99% TiVo-proof and advertisers are guaranteed to get the ratings they signed up for,” Mulcahy said.
ESPN is looking to have an increase in advertiser interest in the coming year, with 43 percent of media buyers and advertisers saying they will up their spend with ESPN, according to a Beta Research survey.
In 2006 and 2007, ESPN had the largest market share of gross ad revenue of all cable networks, climbing ahead of 2005 leaders Nickelodeon and MTV, according to SNL Kagan.
With interest so high, both ESPN and the NFL Network have begun showing more high school sports events and have created a few of their own, including last weekend’s ESPNU High School All-American Game at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex near Orlando, Fla. On the same day, the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, which also stars high school players, ran on NBC.
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