I’m a big Indycar fan. So I was overjoyed to see the series get several promotional slots from FOX Sports during its coverage of Super Bowl LIX on Sunday. And I think there was a lesson for radio stations by those promos.
FOX Sports is about to enter its first year broadcasting the Indycar series. So it has a vested interest in making sure as many people as possible are exposed to, and ultimately watch, the races when the season begins on Sunday, March 2nd.
There were three promos for the series during the game broadcast. Not the pregame show, but the actual game broadcast, when viewership is at its heights. Not only is viewership at its peak, but that’s also when the price for a 30-second commercial is at its peak.
During the broadcast, FOX was getting $8 million for each 30-second slot. In some cases, more than $8 million per spot. Which means the network saw more than $700 million in advertising sales for the day. A nice chunk of change.
But that could have been more. I’m sure FOX featured more promos than just for the Indycar series throughout the game broadcast. Since I’m not as interested in those promos, I wasn’t exactly keeping track, but logic would dictate there were others.
FOX, however, took the approach that I think many radio stations could remember, too: “Nobody’s commercials are more important than ours.”
Could they have sold the advertising slots, not had the promos for their own stuff, and made a couple extra million bucks? Totally. And they would have been well within their rights to do so! But when you work under the mindset that nobody else’s commercials are more important than yours, it’s easy to find the value in putting your own messages in front of your biggest audiences. And make no mistake about it, Super Bowl LIX is the biggest audience in history.
It’s easy to take the immediate payoff. Roughly, the network would have made $24 million on the time it gave the Indycar series alone. But growing the audience of a new program or new rights partner sure is helpful in the long-run if you’re able to leverage this one gigantic audience one time, instead of hoping and praying that the audience for another property will grow organically, while you pocket $24 million.
I listen to sports on the radio frequently. I will infrequently hear station promos. Instead, I’ll often hear every commercial slot in a break filled, along with the rejoins and legal IDs also featuring sponsorships and advertisements. And there’s nothing left for the station to even hardly position itself, let alone tell the audience what it can expect in the future, or why they should be locked into the station at all times.
I wholly recognize it’s easy for me to say “don’t take the short-term windfall while forgetting about the health of your station overall” when I’m not trying to reach my monthly, quarterly, or yearly sales goals. And you never want to be the Market Manager, Sales Manager, Brand Manager, or Program Director that is turning down money or is the reason your station doesn’t have more of it.
But you also don’t want to be one of those leaders who also sees your ratings dwindle because you don’t ever have the ability to leverage the audience for your own gain. And if you’re not leveraging them for yourself, you’re not likely killing it in providing your advertisers a great return on investment, either.
Invest in your brand. Invest in your programming. If FOX didn’t make everything for sale when the price tag was $8 million per spot, your radio station doesn’t have to, either. Keep some time for yourself when your audience is at its peak. It’ll be worth it in the long run.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
