Robert Seidman of TVbytheNumbers reports on the latest estimated costs of 30 second commercials for the 2009-2010 network television that were recently published by Ad Age:
Now there are estimates on the rest, but be warned. It seems these estimates were largely gathered from the upfronts (and other sources) and they don’t appear to have been adjusted based on early results. They have Two and a Half Men making more than The Big Bang Theory (even though TBBT has outperformed it in terms of adults 18-49 ratings) and my guess is they have not adjusted for the beast that is NCIS.
“Ad Age calculated ad prices for each show by using the upfront prices agreed to by as many as seven different media-buying agencies and other sources. According to our survey, TV prices seem to be on the decline. In the 2008-2009 season, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” commanded an average of $434,792 for a 30-second commercial, compared with this season’s average of $339,700. ABC’s “Grey’s” brought in an average of $326,685, compared with this season’s $240,462.”
As you can see, from the above a lot of shows took hits this year versus last.
Payout Perspective:
We’ve been following the upfront commercial market over the last few months, and this is the first solid information we’ve seen regarding the actual prices being paid. Any surprise that Sunday Night Football is raking in the most per 30 second spot?
An ESPN Sports Poll recently divulged that NFL Football is the national leader when it comes to drawing the coveted male 18-34 year-old demographic that so many of these advertisers are looking to target. MMA, however, was second on that poll, and that poses a set of interesting questions:
1.) What might MMA on primetime be able to garner for a network in terms of a 30 second commercial spot?
2.) What is SpikeTV currently getting on a commercial spot for a UFC product such as the TUF series or Ultimate Fight Night?
3.) Lastly, what might CBS be able to get for Fedor vs. Rogers on November 7th?
If executives at the major networks are currently cringing at the decline of commercial ad spot prices, they might want to further consider MMA’s ability to draw in high-revenue advertisers. November 7th could be the type of proper trial run that MMA really needs on major network television – especially now with the way the market is going.
Additionally, the cost effectiveness of live sports like MMA – or reality programming, in general – is another plus for any network looking to pick up the sport.
The closest MMA comparison is ABC’s Saturday Night College Football which reportedly was going for $140,080, but I would be shocked if MMA’s rates are on par.
When TUF first started mmaweekly.com estimated or revealed that Spike was getting about 3500 per slot. After rating increased it was expected they would be able to command 5000 per slot. Basically generating a little over 100K per hour. Im sure that %k per slot has went up with TUF becoming a consistant source for male viewers. Also as MMA become more acceptable imsure there are more copanies now wanting to buy time. But its not anywhere close to the numbers listed in this report. I would guess no more that 10K per slot. More like 6-7K.
Now i dotn know if MMAWeekly was giving the UFCs cut or if it was Spikes numbers. Maybe Mr Philpott or Mr Swift can give more info into this as the info i seen was a few years ago.
Any story on how the CBS sales are going? Sherdog has an update?
http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/cbs-fedor-boosts-credibility-with-advertisers-20577