One Super Bowl Ad Bought 6 or 7 Plays
A final thought from last week’s football game.
Chrysler's historic “Imported from Detroit” spot lasted about half as long as Green Bay MVP Aaron Rodgers was out on the field. Think about that.
According to numerous studies, including one conducted a year ago by the Wall St. Journal, the total aggregated playing time (actual action) in an NFL game is approximately 11 minutes.
Factoring in a handful of special teams plays, that means the average starter is looking at about five minutes of physical exertion. Don’t get me wrong, those 5 minutes are hard, but where do I apply? Oh right, middle aged, out of shape ad agency owners aren’t welcome in the NFL. Baseball, on the other hand....
From kickoff to the final gun, Super Bowl XLV lasted three hours and 32 minutes. That’s 12,720 seconds.
In that time there were 149 plays.
Which means a play happened about every 85 seconds and each one lasted about four and a half seconds. I’ll skip the easy jokes.
This means for $3,000,000 a sponsor underwrote somewhere between six or seven plays. Or almost exactly 30 seconds of action. Weird coincidence huh? A 30 second spot bought 30 seconds of playing time. Kind of like the most expensive video game in the universe.
There's lots of ways to crunch the numbers and anyone who knows me will be quick to point out that numbers crunching isn't my varsity sport. But still, the NFL is facing a lockout because the players and owners just can’t figure out how to slice up a pie worth $100,000 a second!
