The Super Bowl commercial break has long been a place for comedy and celebrity cameos, for heartwarming snippets and carefully crafted taglines – for entertainment that many fans find more compelling than the game itself.
That respite from the real world will be interrupted this year – at least for 120 seconds – for, you guessed it, presidential politics.
In a rare move, the campaigns of Michael Bloomberg and Donald Trump have each purchased 60-second advertisement slots during Sunday's national television broadcast of Super Bowl LIV (6:30 p.m. ET, Fox) between the Chiefs and the 49ers. The ads cost more than $10 million apiece, and together, they represent a new frontier for both political advertising on television and the realm of Super Bowl commercials.
Two minutes of Super Bowl LIV broadcast on Fox will go to Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg, as they each air ads during the game. (Photo: Ron Schwane, AP)
According to historical data from USA TODAY's Ad Meter, these will be the first two campaign ads to air nationally during the Super Bowl since at least 1989, when Ad Meter first began ranking Super Bowl ads by consumer rating.
They might very well be the first dueling political ads to ever air during a national Super Bowl broadcast.
"A candidate in a gubernatorial race might buy an ad for a particular state, or someone might buy an ad for a particular town or neighborhood," said Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University. "But a national Super Bowl ad is unheard of when it comes to political candidates."
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Less than two years ago, Trump repeatedly targeted the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell on Twitter, incorrectly claiming that the league's television ratings were in decline because players knelt during the national anthem. Now he, and Bloomberg, will use the Super Bowl's popularity to reach an estimated audience of more than 100 million viewers with their campaign messaging.
NFL spokespeople did not respond to repeated messages from USA TODAY Sports about the campaign ads, nor about political advertising during the Super Bowl generally.
Spokespeople for Fox, which will broadcast Sunday's game, declined to comment — but the network is taking steps to avoid frustrating other Super Bowl advertisers.
AdAge, an industry publication, reported last week that Fox will "isolate" the Bloomberg and Trump campaign ads by running them alongside the network's own promos to avoid upsetting other advertisers.
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Joe Lockhart, the one-time White House press secretary who later worked as an executive for the NFL, said the campaign ads could have ripple effects on multiple fronts. The NFL would probably rather air "a funny Bud Light or Doritos ad than Donald Trump and Mike Bloomberg," he said. And the candidates could face blowback for injecting political divisiveness into the year's biggest sporting event.
"People watch football to escape from things like their job, politics, war in the Middle East, things like that. So it's generally not the place I think politicians traditionally go," Lockhart said. "But neither Donald Trump nor Michael Bloomberg are traditional politicians, so it's not that surprising."
'A little bit of cat-and-mouse'
Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for Trump's re-election campaign, told USA TODAY Sports in a statement this month that it first talked with Fox about airing an ad during the Super Bowl last fall.(Broadcasting of the game rotates between Fox, NBC and CBS.)
The campaign reserved its time slot in December and paid for the ad "a few weeks ago," Murtaugh said.
For the Bloomberg campaign, the decision to air its own Super Bowl ad was grounded in one-upmanship. Early news reports indicated that Trump would air a 30-second commercial, so Bloomberg bought 60 seconds. "Mike is taking the fight to Trump," campaign spokesperson Michael Frazier wrote in an email.
Hours after The New York Times first reported that Bloomberg had purchased the 60-second ad, Trump's campaign said it had also purchased 60 seconds of time.
Lockhart described the ads, at their core, as "a little bit of cat-and-mouse."
"Once Trump decided to do it, Bloomberg wanted to show that he had the funds and the muscle to do it in an even bigger way," said Lockhart, who is now a CNN contributor and host of a podcast called "Words Matter." "It may not so much be the content of the ad, but the ability to one-up the president."
Erika Franklin Fowler, a professor at Wesleyan University who tracks political television advertising, said the exorbitant costs of Super Bowl ads have long kept political candidates away, leading them to instead opt for local or regional buys. In 2008, for example, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama purchased 30 seconds of advertising time in 24 local markets for $250,000, according to The New York Times.
Bloomberg and Trump are unique, Fowler said, because both obviously have money to burn. In fact, Bloomberg spent more than $75 million on TV advertising in the first month of his candidacy alone, according to figures from the Wesleyan Media Project.
"It’s stunning," Fowler said of the New York billionaire's TV spending so far. "There’s not another word for it."
Trump, meanwhile, has already used his Super Bowl ad to drum up support. His campaign ran ads on Facebook late last week offering up to 1 million supporters "early viewing access" to its Super Bowl commercial. The Facebook ads also attempted to entice supporters to donate by claiming without evidence that "the Fake News media will do everything they can to ensure our ad never gets aired."
'You're in lockstep'
Current and former network executives told USA TODAY Sports that Fox likely had little choice but to allow Bloomberg and Trump to advertise during the Super Bowl, even though the ads might not be warmly received by otherwise festive football fans.
"I don’t think anyone, either the league or Fox, was going to tell the president he couldn’t buy an ad," Lockhart said. "And once you’ve told the president he can buy an ad, and Bloomberg wants an ad, you’ve got to sell him an ad."
For a network such as Fox, there is essentially a two-step approval process for Super Bowl commercials: Allowing the advertiser to buy time during the broadcast, and signing off on the content within the ad itself.
Networks will often lean on repeat advertisers with whom they have long-term relationships. First-time Super Bowl buyers – such as the Bloomberg and Trump campaigns – are vetted by the network to ensure they have both legitimate interest and the financial means to purchase time.
When the advertiser submits the ad in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, current and former executives said, it is reviewed by both the NFL and the network. Either party has the right to block specific content that might be lewd, graphic or otherwise violate their policies.
In 2017, for example, 84 Lumber said Fox required the company to remove imagery of a border wall from its commercial. SodaStream claimed its 2014 ad was nixed because it ended with a parting shot at two of the game's longtime advertisers, Coke and Pepsi. And a 2005 Airborne commercial was banned because it included a glimpse of the late Mickey Rooney's bare bottom.
One senior media executive with direct knowledge of the Super Bowl advertising process said Fox and the NFL would have no viable reason to reject a campaign ad unless it violated either party's broadcast standards.
"When political candidates start inquiring about Super Bowl advertising, it’s not the kind of thing you would keep from your partner at the NFL," added the executive, who was granted anonymity to speak openly about industry practices. "You’re in lockstep. You’re keeping the NFL informed every step of the way."
Neither Bloomberg nor Trump had publicly released the content of their Super Bowl ads as of Friday evening, and experts said viewers' reactions to the ads could depend in part on the messages they contain. But Calkins, the Northwestern professor, said the mere presence of campaign ads during the Super Bowl sends a message of its own.
"Super Bowl ads are very symbolic," Calkins said. "You’re communicating that you care about your business, you’re investing in your brand, you’re willing to spend money. That’s true for the products you see on the Super Bowl, but in this case, it is certainly also true of the candidates."
Contact Tom Schad at [email protected] or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.
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