Major spike
If Americans thought 2022 was the high-water mark for the amount of sports betting advertising on TV, the major spike in ad spend and impressions for 2023 has knocked that notion right out the park.
According to Ed Norton’s EDO Ad EnGage, total TV ad spend on the vertical hit $237.8m in 2023, a staggering 10% increase over 2022.
Americans viewed 20.7 billion sports betting ads compared to 2022’s 13.6 billion
Instead of easing up on the battle for market share in 2023, sportsbooks went in guns blazing, with EDO reporting Americans viewed 20.7 billion sports betting ads compared to 2022’s 13.6 billion, a 52% spike.
Sportsbooks also increased the number of TV ads, with total airings more than doubling from approximately 27,000 in 2022 to nearly 60,000 in 2023.
The ads even appeared in places such as Discovery Life Channel, TBS, and American Heroes Channel, networks not often associated with live sports.
All eyes on the NFL
Along with the spikes in ad spend and views was a significant increase in Americans watching NFL games, in particular from the September start of football season to December 26.
According to Nielsen, NFL games accounted for 93 of the “100 most watched U.S. TV broadcasts of 2023.” An indicator of this stratospheric rise can be seen in the previously gradual creep of NFL games in the most-watched category, with 72, 75, and 82 games in the top 100 in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively.
out of the top 20 most-watched broadcasts, all were NFL games
Even plainer evidence of football’s domination of the airwaves in 2023 was that out of the top 20 most-watched broadcasts, all were NFL games.
Two major media brands benefited handsomely from the spike in NFL ad spend for 2023, EDO reported, namely Amazon Prime Video and ABC/ESPN. Amazon’s Thursday Night Football raked in $41m ad dollars ($27.9m in 2022) while the latter duo pocketed $11.9m for its 2023 Monday Night Football broadcasts, up from just $4.6m for the 2022 football season.
Gearing up for the Super Bowl
With the Super Bowl coming to Las Vegas next month, even more ad dollars are expected to flow into the TV networks and streaming brands. Sports betting market leader FanDuel is spending big money on a live Super Bowl Bowl LVIII commercial, as it brings back Rob Gronkowski for another crack at landing a field goal.
The sportsbook giant and ex-New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end announced Tuesday their collaboration on Kick of Destiny 2. FanDuel customers who guess correctly if the future NFL Hall of Famer nails the 25-yard field goal or not will pocket a share of $10m in bonus bets.
This time round actor Carl Weathers (Rocky, Action Jackson, “The Mandalorian”), a former Raiders linebacker, replaces Adam Vinatieri as Gronkowski’s coach after last year’s kick and miss.