The Super Bowl might be among the most popular sporting events of the year – this year’s game on Jan. 30 between the Tennessee Titans and St. Louis Rams is expected to draw well over three million Canadian television viewers – but you wouldn’t know it from the anemic efforts to sell around the event on the part of Canada’s sport-related Web sites.
Ken Johnson, vice-president of sales for Global Television, which holds the broadcast rights to the game, says the network’s Web site, globaltv.com, hasn’t made much of an effort to tie in to the Super Bowl, but he attributes that to bad timing – the site only went online Dec. 6.
‘We didn’t have our site in place in time for planning for Super Bowl, but we have every intention of extending it [next year],’ says Johnson.
David Schwalm, vice-president of sales at online news and information service Canoe, offers no such excuses. He admits he fumbled the ball.
‘I’m going to be quite candid and say we just have so many other things on the go that I haven’t made that a priority. That’s a terrible admission isn’t it?
‘Certainly, with ad costs the way they are at networks, the Internet is the logical alternative.’
Some might think so. According to Global’s rate card, a package of three Ontario-only 30-second spots – one pre-game, one during the game and one in the post-game show – was selling for $60,000. The asking price for a single 30-second spot was roughly $45,000 to $50,000. Premium rates by the standards of most Canadian marketers. But even so, Global had to turn advertisers away.
‘Every year, we have more people who want in than we have airtime for,’ says Johnson.
Much of the available airtime was dominated by one advertiser, Labatt Breweries, which has been associated with the Super Bowl for 13 years through Budweiser, the official beer sponsor of the National Football League.
In the months leading up to the game, Labatt has leveraged that relationship for all its worth, with a massive, integrated promotion called the Budweiser Super Bowl event. Invitations to Super Bowl parties in six major cities were distributed in Budweiser beer cases. As part of its game coverage, Global has agreed to include remote broadcasts from each of the parties.
Budweiser also had plans to rotate six television spots – including three new executions from Palmer Jarvis DDB – during the big game.
Labatt also has a lock on The Sports Network’s Super Bowl coverage. While the specialty service does not have rights to carry the game itself, it is devoting a lot of time and effort to coverage surrounding the event. As an example, from Jan. 26-30, every edition of TSN Sportsdesk will feature a Budweiser Super Bowl report.
But TSN.ca has done little to leverage its parent’s efforts, not even bringing Budweiser to the Web site.
Chris Doyle, a spokesperson for TSN, says that’s because Canadian Web site sponsors like to buy for a longer period of time than the week or two typically surrounding the Super Bowl.
‘What we’ve found is that in securing long-term deals through Y&R with such companies as Ford and AGF mutual funds, [the contract is] over an annual basis, and then they have widespread coverage on different pages throughout our site.’
That’s definitely not the case in the U.S., where much of the advertising on ABC.com, ESPN.com and SuperBowl.com was sold specifically around the Super Bowl.
‘Advertisers expect fans to go to our site for the latest information, so that’s where they’re going to place their buys,’ says Eric Handler, director of communications for Go.com, parent company of each of the U.S. sites mentioned. ‘We thrive on these major events.’
