How Much Does a Super Bowl Ad Cost? More Than Ever: Report

Companies are shelling out the big bucks to have their ads air during Super Bowl 2025.

Fox Corp. reportedly sold at least 10 of the commercials that will appear in the Sunday, February 9, telecast for more than $8 million, according to two people familiar with the matter, Variety reported on Wednesday, January 29. The price point became a new record for Super Bowl inventory.

The Super Bowl “is the only place where you can aggregate legitimate scale with one commercial,” Mark Evans, executive vice president of sales at Fox Sports, said. “It’s not like any other thing.”

With streaming changing the landscape of TV, Evans pointed out that there are fewer places for marketers to find a large audience to watch content at the same time. He claimed that several TV advertisers are taking money they once would have invested in primetime broadcast and cable shows and putting it in sports instead. “The NFL has benefitted from that,” he said.

The outlet reported that Fox began seeking around $7 million for 30 seconds of Super Bowl ad time and had disposed of most of it in August 2024. In a third quarter investor call, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch reportedly announced that all ads had sold out.

Months later, the California wildfires led to a group of sponsors, such as State Farm Insurance, to ask to be released from their deals, Variety reported. Fox resold their time for higher prices.

In this year’s Super Bowl — where the Kansas City Chiefs are taking on the Philadelphia Eagles — companies including Squarespace, PepsiCo and Stellantis that have announced their advertisements. Evans said that viewers will see fewer automaker ads and potentially less movie studios and streamers.

The outlet noted that ads around the Super Bowl telecast also come with a hefty price tag. 30 seconds of ad time in Fox’s late pre-game coverage have gone for as much as $4.5 million, one of the people familiar with the matter told Variety. (The figure has reportedly been $2 million in the past.)

Fox also added extra commercials into the main event, with the NFL reportedly agreeing to let the network add about five spots as “floating” breaks that may occur in special scenarios including a time out or if a player is injured. A person familiar with the negotiations told Variety that Fox and the NFL would share revenue from those commercials.

The commercials show up in so-called “flex pods,” Mike North, the league’s vice president of broadcast planning, said, noting that the breaks were created to stop repeated interruptions in the game.

The concept “lets you take advantage of downtime. If you’re lucky, you get to the fourth quarter and maybe eight minutes in the late game and the only break is if it’s the two-minute warning,” he said. “Now we can just play football, and let the game continue with rapid-fire action and excitement.”

The outlet reported that Fox’s last Super Bowl telecast in 2023 generated around $600 million in total ad revenue including the main event and ancillary programming.