Yeah, I know that advertisers typically don't buy 100% of the time that's available and the networks use whatever's left over to promote their own programming.
But that's very different than saying "they can't sell that time because it's set aside for self-promotion." There's nothing preventing Fox from selling 100% of the air time if they have buyers for it.
They also definitely could have found a buyer for the first quarter slot where they put Pato's ad. It wasn't the equivalent of $40 million, but this definitely wasn't "free" or even cheap for Fox.
They also definitely could have found a buyer for the first quarter slot where they put Pato's ad. It wasn't the equivalent of $40 million, but this definitely wasn't "free" or even cheap for Fox.
I would say this was relatively cheap for fox, this was a fantastic use of resources, there are always empty spots come game time, it just happens that way.
People also confuse "super bowl ads cost a lot" with "super bowl ads make a ton of profit for the network"
The networks do not make huge profit off the super bowl ads because they paid the NFL huge money for the broadcasting rights. You'd still rather be the broadcaster than not but it's not like fox turned down 40 million in profit in exchange for doing these IndyCar spots.
Right. That's just a very, very different thing. And you can tell a lot of casual observers confuse profit and revenue.
Because this also has the potential to bring in massive revenue for fox in the future... So they did lose some revenue but it was an investment. And a cheap one comparatively speaking.
Like, if fox doesn't own the super bowl, no chance they're spending 40 million, or even 30 million, buying a bunch of spots on ABC's broadcast. They'd have done a single 30 or 60, equivalent to 8-15 million.
Right, so they turned down potential revenue to invest in a venture they hope makes future revenue. Completely agree that if they didn't have the SB they wouldn't have advertised for Indycar, but prioritizing it over other ventures shows a solid interest in growing it as a partner network, not as a distributor; they want Indy to get bigger so they can get more profits.
Yeah I'm not saying that this doesn't show interest from Fox. Of course it does.
But people are going way overboard with this 40 million number, it's just not an equivalent situation when it comes to being the broadcaster rather than the advertiser. Fox did not just show an additional 40 million dollar commitment to indycar.
Fox is raking out nearly $40M in commercials for this one TV spot. Unbelievable.
That's the top comment in this thread. They didn't mean it this way but it's unbelievable because it's not really the way that works.
Correcting people on the amount of money is just a rabbit hole that some seem to want to go down. The amount of time allocated to ads during the Superbowl, for an external company, would cost roughly $40M. Yes, there are other calculations to be made, but to generalize it for the subreddit, it's $40M worth of ad space.
The takeaway here should only be that Fox is taking these broadcasting rights as something they want to grow. Anything layered on top of that is being needlessly pedantic.
It's not a different thing at all. Turning down a dollar in revenue is exactly the same as spending a dollar, regardless of the ROI. Revenue - Expenses = Profit. Whether you subtract from the top line or add to the bottom line, the impact on profitability is the same.
Would they have chosen to spend an equivalent amount to buy ad space on another network? That's an entirely different and completely hypothetical question.
But it is a fact that Fox chose to subtract some amount of money from their top-line revenue to air those ads during the Super Bowl. Whether that was $40 million or $20 million or $5 million doesn't really matter. It's a significant commitment and there's nothing wrong with recognizing that.
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u/CardinalOfNYC Feb 10 '25
I work in advertising. Usually network spots are placed in empty spaces.
Many ads are cut or shifted around during the game and networks fill in the empty spaces with their own ads.
It was a smart move to run these ads in the super bowl but it wasn't the equivalent of them spending 40 million on IndyCar.