AsylumGuido

NFL kickoff game is sold out on TV, with double-digit revenue increase over 2019

Posted by Mike Florio on September 10, 2020, 2:28 PM EDT

Football is back, and football still sells.

It sells because it gathers eyeballs and rating points like nothing else. On Thursday night, it will gather many millions around TV sets and the other devices through which Americans currently watch the country’s most popular sport.

As a result, advertisers are paying to attached their goods and services to the game.

“Tonight’s NFL Kickoff game is sold out, with revenue up double digits vs. 2019 and the average cost per 30-second spot near $900,000,” an NBC spokesperson said on Thursday.

That’s good news for the networks and for the league. It means that money will be made this season (economic struggles notwithstanding), and it means that the NFL will be able to generate the kind of payments it’s seeking in the next round of negotiations from all networks.

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill

AsylumGuido

Advertisers Flock to N.F.L. Broadcasts as a ‘Safe Haven’

Ad spending has slumped in the pandemic, in part over uncertainty about how sports seasons would proceed. With an on-time start, football is poised to capture “a greater share of a smaller pie.”


By Tiffany Hsu
Sept. 10, 2020

The N.F.L. season kickoff is giving the advertising industry reason to rejoice after months of disruption related to the pandemic and civil unrest.

Media companies and marketing executives are looking forward to a boost in TV ratings amid uncertainty in other professional and college sports leagues over how their seasons will proceed. NBC said it sold out of ad space for the season-opening game on Thursday night, between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans, with revenue up substantially from last year and an average 30-second commercial costing nearly $900,000.

Football tends to be far more attractive to advertisers than basketball, baseball and hockey combined, according to the research firm Kantar. The 2019 football regular season, playoffs and Super Bowl generated an estimated $4.3 billion in ad revenue for CBS, Fox and NBC, with nearly $200 million coming in the first week.

With broadcast rights contracts expiring starting next year, analysts from the research firm MoffettNathanson predicted in an investor note on Thursday that the league would be able to command “gigantic increases for the upcoming cycle of new N.F.L. contracts,” with some networks paying up to 75 percent more for their packages. Current media partners “all seemingly are eager to extend their current relationships,” the analysts wrote, estimating that the total annual N.F.L. price tag will rise to $8.82 billion from $5.62 billion.

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“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill

AsylumGuido

The NFL's ratings problem is a distant memory

By Frank Pallotta, CNN Business

Updated 9:30 AM ET, Thu September 10, 2020

New York (CNN Business)It wasn't all that long ago that the NFL, TV's most dominant property, had a ratings problem.

In 2016 and 2017, the league saw sluggish ratings, with its numbers down and plenty of blame to go around. Some said it was because of injured players and boring games. President Trump blamed the ratings dip on players kneeling during the National Anthem. Even the contentious 2016 presidential election was seemingly a factor.

Those days are a distant memory following two seasons of viewership growth, which has made the NFL even more of a ratings powerhouse. On Thursday night the league embarks on a new season as the defending Super Bowl champions, Kansas City Chiefs, take on the Houston Texans.
This season will be unlike any other, given that it's kicking off in the middle of a global pandemic and another heated presidential election. Even so, the league will likely see viewership increase yet again, according to Jay Rosenstein, a former VP of programming at CBS Sports.

"I think that the interest in football, and particularly in the NFL, is heightened by the fact that we haven't had any football since the Super Bowl. There was no preseason, and many of the premier college games that normally open the season weren't there because of Covid," Rosenstein told CNN Business. "There's a lot of anticipation for football right now, and the league will ride that into the season."

Rosenstein added that he expects the NFL's numbers to see a bump of "about 5%" from last year, but noted that it's difficult to make any prediction because of Covid-19.

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“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill

mapcow

****ing yawn fest

QBREES9

I watched,Pretty good for the first Preseason game. Just kidding.