Crypto Absent from Super Bowl Ads

One year after the Crypto Bowl, it’s out with the new and in with the booze for Super Bowl commercials.

Fox, which has broadcasting rights this year, has sold all of its advertising airtime for Super Bowl LVII, sticking with the old reliables of beer and snacks, with crypto nowhere to be found.

I Think I’ll have Myself a Beer

Roughly 100 million viewers tune into the Super Bowl each year. People who don’t even like football will often watch just to see the bevy of star-studded commercials and wild halftime shows. Not everyone is rooting for Philly or KC, but everyone is rooting for Doritos and Rihanna, so those commercials can run companies more than $7 million just for 30 seconds of air time.

Yes, we all remember the now doubly ironic Larry David commercial from last year’s Super Bowl where he gives his whole “Ehhh, I don’t think so” schtick to someone trying to sell him on crypto exchange FTX. But also airing between touchdowns and Dr. Dre-led performances were ads for Coinbase, Crypto.com, and eToro.

But like the 1986 Chicago Bears compared to the 2022 Chicago Bears (humble burn), oh, how the mighty have fallen:

• Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports, told the Associated Press that at least three crypto companies were interested in buying advertising this year, but once FTX imploded in November, they all started to back out of the deals. “There’s zero representation in that category on the day at all,” he said.
• Beer has always been at the forefront of Super Bowl advertising, but for the last three decades, it’s exclusively been the stomping ground of Budweiser and its iconic Clydesdales. This year, parent company Anheuser-Busch has forfeited that exclusivity, opening up the field to new players including Heineken, Diageo, Remy Martin, and Molson Coors, the last of which is offering a pool of $500,000 to those who successfully guess what will happen in its commercial.

May the Force Be With You: You know what’s weird? The fact that some advertisers will actually debut Super Bowl ads online before the big game. Already we can watch Alicia Silverstone reprise her Clueless role of Cher Horowitz in an ad for Rakuten, or Tony Romo do his “best” Bill Murray impression in this Michelob Ultra ad. Why not just save it for the actual day? Well, in 2011 Volkswagen debuted its Star Wars-infused ad. The commercial reached 8 million views on YouTube in the week before game day. So other advertisers followed suit. As the Mandalorian would say, this is the way.