📺 A Pay-Per-View Super Bowl?

I flew to Las Vegas for Super Bowl LVIII with Mark Murphy, President of the Green Bay Packers. Now, you might be asking yourself:

“Tyler, how did you get on the Packers’ private jet?”

I didn’t, Mark just had a layover in Minneapolis and I walked past him sitting in first class on my way to seat 35C. But you at least have to appreciate that he’s a man of the people.

Here’s what we have on deck:

🗞 The Big Story: $250 to Watch the Super Bowl?

📉 Biggest Loser: NFL’s $800K Turf Experiment

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Best $7M Ever Spent

🗞 The Big Story

You might have to start paying to watch the Super Bowl.

And that’s not just coming from me, that’s straight from the former president of ESPN…

But Why? The NFL already has over 100 million people who watch the game every year, with advertising spots that now cost $7 million per 30 seconds.

I think this graph explains why:

In the past few years, we’ve seen ad spending outpace Super Bowl viewership for the first time ever.

But the NFL has been planning for this moment for decades because they understand two things:

1. Brands can reach way more people for way less money online

2. There is a maximum number of football fans in America

So what does the NFL do if they can’t charge more for ads or get more people to watch their games?

Well, they have to start making more money on the fans they already have.

Pay-Per-View Model: Let’s say that the NFL charges fans $100 next year to watch the Super Bowl, but only about half the people who normally watch decide to buy the game.

60 million viewers x $100 pay-per-view = $6 billion in revenue

That’s more than the NHL makes in an entire season and over half the annual revenue of both the MLB and NBA.

Never Gonna Happen, Right? Former ESPN President, John Skipper disagrees - plus he thinks the NFL could charge even more.

Watch More: I’m breaking down how the NFL got to this point in my newest YouTube video and how they’ve been planning to make the Super Bowl pay-per-view for over 20 years.

Click here to subscribe.

📉 Biggest Loser

The Super Bowl grass costs more than Brock Purdy and it still might be a total waste of money.

2023 Debacle: Last year, the NFL spent a reported $800,000 on the grass for the Super Bowl only for players to slip all over it and complain that it was the worst surface they played on all year.

So this year, the NFL committed to making sure the field is perfect and they started this process almost two years ago when a sod farm in California started growing the grass that will be used in this year’s Super Bowl.

Farm to Vegas: The grass is grown in a plastic base with very little soil and sand which allows the roots to intertwine, creating a stronger base.

This makes the sod easier to transport and transplant, which was done by rolling up the 100,000 square feet of grass and loading each roll into 30 refrigerated trucks which were driven 7 hours to Allegiant Stadium.

Then, about a week before the game, the previous grass was torn out, the foundation was leveled with a laser, and the new grass was laid in its place.

At Allegiant Stadium, this is all done in a four-foot-deep rolling tray that can move in and out of the stadium in about 65 minutes to allow the grass to get natural sunlight.

Pre-Game Prep: During the week leading up to the game, the NFL says it has been undergoing standard testing procedures to monitor things like:

• Hardness

• Traction

• Soil temperature

• Moisture

They even use this machine, called the Biocore Elite Athlete Shoe Turf Tester, or the BEAST for short to test how different cleats and movements will interact with the grass.

But according to reports, none of that will fix last year’s issue which simply involved over-watering the field and not giving it enough time to dry in the sunlight before it was rolled back into the stadium.

Regardless, the NFL likely spent close to $1M on this whole process, which is more than the $870,000 Brock Purdy is getting paid this year.

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🏆 Winner’s Circle

It cost $7 million for a 30-second ad during this year’s Super Bowl, but that might turn out to be the best deal in advertising history.

Price Goes Up: The average cost per Super Bowl ad has nearly doubled in the past 10 years which is largely because of the intense competition by brands to secure one of just 70 ad spots during the most-watched American TV event of the year.

Stagnant Viewership: Even though ad prices have gone up by 75% since 2014, viewership for the Big Game has been relatively stagnant.

So why is $7 million for 30 seconds on this year’s Super Bowl such a good deal?

Positive Momentum: For starters, regular-season viewership was up 7% across the league this year.

And if you apply that same increase to this year’s Super Bowl over last year’s record-breaking numbers, then that would be over 123M people tuning in.

Making it the most-viewed TV event in American history on a single channel.

Now, that exposure obviously has its benefits for brands, but it’s an even better deal when you take into account next year’s potential ad prices.

Girl Power: With the help of Taylor Swift, a large portion of the new fans watching this year’s Super Bowl will likely be women.

In fact, networks have reported increases in female viewership of upwards of 53% just because Taylor Swift attended the game, and brands are taking note with their ad spending.

Last year, there were zero national, in-game ads for health and beauty brands, meanwhile this year you have make-up brands like L’Oreal and e.l.f. making their Super Bowl debuts and companies like Dove advertising during the Super Bowl for the first time in 18 years.

With all of the brands using women-focused messaging.

2025 Boom: When you consider the flood of new brands that will probably want to take advantage of the Super Bowl next year for the first time, don’t be surprised when you see ad prices skyrocket because of increased competition and viewership.

Maybe even jumping as high as $10M per 30 seconds.

⏱ In Other News

• Did we just invent… cable TV?

• Las Vegas doesn’t want the A’s.

• A look inside the most high-tech Super Bowl ever.

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👋 Happy Friday! I’ve officially entered the next stage of my career as a sports business content creator:

Posting long threads on Twitter.

If that’s how you found me, welcome, and if you call it ‘X’ - here’s the door: 🚪