The 50th Super Bowl won’t occur until Feb. 7, 2016, but broadcaster CBS is already celebrating.
A 30-second Super Bowl ad is selling for as much as $5 million, the network president and chief executive Leslie Moonves said during a Wednesday earnings call.
That’s 11% higher than the base price of $4.5 million that NBC charged advertisers during the previous Super Bowl, according to ESPN. Between 2005 and 2014, the price of a 30-spot has increased 75%, generating a total of $2.19 billion in sales.
Prices are only so high because marketers are willing to pay to access the enormous Super Bowl audience. Some 114.4 million people on average tuned into the 2015 Super Bowl to watch the Seattle Seahawks play the Patriots, making the game the most-watched broadcast in the history of U.S. television. That estimate doesn’t even account for larger viewing groups at private parties, or bars.
For some advertisers, $5 million for that many eyeballs is a price worth paying.