Despite saturated live sports calendar, Super Bowl remains north star for brands

But there’s a dilemma for advertisers hoping to capitalize on the audiences tuning in. With so much ground to cover, should marketers spread their budgets across the entire surface area — or concentrate their efforts in one or two?

Take Hyundai, for example. The car maker chose not to run a Super Bowl spot this year, instead opting to run a campaign supporting the launch of the latest Palisade SUV throughout the NFL season and during the playoffs that ended in late January. It has a long-running partnership with FIFA, and plans to take advantage of the World Cup come June.

“For us, FIFA was really the big financial decision that helped us focus on where we needed to be for the full year,” Sean Gilpin, Hyundai’s CMO, told Digiday. “If it weren’t for [the World Cup] in a year [with] a launch like the Palisade, I wouldn’t say that the Super Bowl would be overlooked.”

Nike and Doordash are also set to give the Big Game a miss. Grooming brand Dollar Shave Club, for example, originally hoped to take a Super Bowl spot, but senior director of marketing Nikki Frisz said its creative was rejected by NBC, due to its script including the word “bullshit.” Instead it’s spreading that budget over a broader range of media including Meta’s channels, TikTok and streamers like Amazon Prime to stay “culturally relevant” during the packed sporting calendar.

Other brands are skating around the Super Bowl to focus on the Winter Olympics, with opening ceremonies kick off Friday (Feb. 6). Outerwear brand Arc’teryx is making its first linear TV buys with a campaign launching against NBC’s coverage of the Games.

“I really think that the cost for a single commercial creates such pressure on a 30-second spot that clients are questioning what the value to their business is at this stage in the game,” said Jacqueline Hoyos, chief media officer at agency Moroch. “While smaller sporting opportunities have less reach, the reality is that they can be many times more culturally relevant and authentic for brands at a smaller price point.”

But don’t go thinking that the Super Bowl is set to be diluted. NBCU sold out of ad inventory for the event rapidly last summer, with some spots going for as much as $10 million a pop. 

Confectionary brand Nerds, for example, will be showing ads against the Big Game and the Olympic Games. Per Katie Duffy, vp, global brands at parent company Ferrara, the opportunity to hit broad demographics can’t be passed up. “It’s a time where there’s lots of real time fan engagement. People are watching these things together,” she said.

State Farm, meanwhile, plans to run ads featuring Keegan Michael Key and Danny McBride during the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics as well as March Madness and the college basketball season — teaser spots have already started running on TV. “We try to maximize our attention-grabbing ideas, and go to places where our customers are engaged. Live sports is still one of those places for us,” said head of marketing Alyson Griffin.

Mimi Swain, chief commercial officer at Ring, told Digiday the camera brand was set to run its first linear Super Bowl buy this year; it’s already run ads during baseball’s World Series and the NFL Championship game, and will extend its campaign into the Olympics and later in the spring, college basketball season. Swain’s justification is a familiar one: such events represent the few remaining opportunities available for brands hunting nationwide audiences.

For example, Intuit TurboTax’s Super Bowl spot will kick off a campaign also incorporating TV spots against the Olympics, plus ads in cinemas, out of home, YouTube and TikTok. “We want to be very saturated in what we feel are like leaned-in moments for viewers,” said Trevor Kelley, vp of marketing, consumer group.

A strategy of hitting multiple tentpoles might be pricey, but it “gives advertisers the ability to extend their messaging into multiple platforms to continue those conversations,” noted WPP Media’s Marty Blich, U.S. head of sports partnerships and investment.

Live sports events calendars like 2026’s don’t come around often, and marketers know that this year’s domino run of tentpoles represents a rare opportunity, he said.

The “waterfall” between the Super Bowl and the Olympics also comes at a time when brands can bank on more viewers watching together, said Natalie Bastien, CMO of measurement firm inMarket. “Weather and seasonality come [into the] fold,” she said. “More people are at home and streaming more, watching TV more.”

All of which means the live sports ad market still has some way to climb before we can think about glimpsing its peak. “We are seeing sports spend continue to climb as it diversifies across a broader set of partners, driven largely by the streaming surge and fragmentation of broadcast rights,” said Shasta Cafarelli, svp of media investment at Tinuiti.

“The live sports marketplace for all of these tent poles has never been stronger,” concluded Adam Schwartz, svp, director of national broadcast, sports media at Horizon Media. “There’s been no signs that people have gone lighter on any of these events. If anything, it’s gone the other way.”