On Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks will face the New England Patriots in the climax showpiece end to the NFL season at Levi’s Stadium, home to the San Francisco 49ers. Whilst the teams are competing for the Vince Lombardy trophy and sporting legacy, one of the biggest battles on Super Bowl weekend comes via unaffiliated brands.
Super Bowl advertisement has become a highly competitive market, with brands producing material it hopes will resonate with Super Bowl viewers and grab the greatest attention.
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This year, a 30-second advertisement during the Super Bowl has hit a new peak of $8 million. This marks a 48.15% increase over the past decade and a substantial 18,723.5% increase since the very first Super Bowl in 1967, at the end of the 1966 season.
One of the key reasons why brands are continuously willing to spend big on Super Bowl advertisements is the huge audience it guarantees. Last year’s 2025 event between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs attracted an average US audience of 127.7 million, peaking at an average of 137.7 million.
In terms of reaching US audiences, no other sporting event competes with the Super Bowl. In comparison, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games attracted an average audience of 30.6 million on NBCUniversal, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup final attracted a combined audience of almost 26 million on Fox.
Brand/product promotion to such a large audience is very rare and worth a premium to its broadcasters. Brand advertising during the event has taken on a world of its own in recent years, with some viewers only tuning in to watch the best brand campaigns rather than any of the sporting action.
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By GlobalDataAmerican Football is the best sport for driving this commercial interest because of its high frequency of in-play breaks. From start to finish, there is roughly 50 minutes of advert space available in a Super Bowl game.
This is very close to the number of minutes played for the game itself (60 minutes). Action away from the sports field also adds to the value of off-field entertainment for viewers, driving further commercial interest.
Off-field entertainment includes showcasing some of the biggest and most popular names in music and entertainment, with Super Bowl LX set to feature a halftime show from Bad Bunny, a pre-game tribute to Green Day, and the national anthem being sung by Charlie Puth.
Cost of a 30-second Super Bowl Ad
| 2026 (Super Bowl LX) | $8,000,000 |
|---|---|
| 2025 (Super Bowl LIX) | $7,300,000 |
| 2024 (Super Bowl LVIII) | $7,000,000 |
| 2023 (Super Bowl LVII) | $6,800,000 |
| 2022 (Super Bowl LVI) | $6,500,000 |
| 2021 (Super Bowl LV) | $5,600,000 |
| 2020 (Super Bowl LIV) | $5,600,000 |
| 2019 (Super Bowl LIII) | $5,200,000 |
| 2018 (Super Bowl LII) | $5,235,000 |
| 2017 (Super Bowl LI) | $5,400,000 |
| 1967 (Super Bowl I) | 1967 (Super Bowl I) |
Source: Bet365
For brands themselves, an initial potential outlay of $8 million for a 30-second advertising slot is just the start of their Super Bowl expenditure. The competitive landscape of Super Bowl adverts in 2026 means they must also spend huge sums on their content production. Looking to attract viewers, many use celebrity endorsements to boost engagement, another big expense.
Super Bowl LX adverts are set to include major names such as Ben Stiller and Benson Boone (Instacart), Sabrina Carpenter (Pringles), Emma Stone (Squarespace), and Kendall Jenner (Fanatics), to name just a few. Brands must go beyond adding name recognition to their commercials to maximize viewership, however.
Campaigns need to be unique and clever; one of the most popular ads last year saw Hellman’s recreate the famous movie scene from ‘When Harry Met Sally’ with its mayonnaise product at the heart of it. This played on movie nostalgia, incorporated the product well, and included strong celebrity association (Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal, and Sydney Sweeney).
Quantifying the return on investment for brands can be difficult, however. Nike generated the highest number of social media engagement actions in 2025, with 188,000 actions, but how this is valued against brand spend can only truly be analyzed by the brands themselves.
With brands such as Budweiser having aired over 100 Super Bowl commercials since its first in 1975, evidence suggests brands believe in the value of Super Bowl advertising. Cambridge University in 2004 found that this was successful for movies too, with Super Bowl-promoted films achieving twice as much in the first weekend, first week, and total US box office revenue against those that weren’t Super Bowl-promoted between 1998 and 2001 [6].
In offering a modern context to this, three of the top four highest earners (A Minecraft Movie, Lilo & Stitch, and Jurassic World: Rebirth) from the 2025 US box office aired trailers during the last Super Bowl.
For NBCUniversal, selling Super Bowl ad space helps to recoup its high spend on NFL rights. NBCUniversal is one of the main rights broadcasters with the league and spends a reported $2 billion a season. Its rights deal runs through to 2034 and includes live Super Bowl rights in the US for three seasons (2026, 2030, and 2034).
Demand for Super Bowl ad space with NBCUniversal, despite its highest price tag, has set a record for the earliest sell-out of its Super Bowl ad space, doing so days before the start of the NFL season in September 2025.
NBCUniversal has also been able to leverage the Super Bowl buzz into wider revenue success. The broadcaster has packaged some Super Bowl rights with Winter Olympics 2026 ad space too, capitalizing on its rare position as the broadcaster of both sporting events, which happen to crossover in competition dates.
In January, this saw NBCUniversal announce that it had also sold out of ad-space for its Winter Olympics coverage, a new record revenue from ad slots against its Winter Olympic content.
