SBJ Unpacks: How Optimum views the Super Bowl

Tonight in Unpacks from the Super Bowl: Optimum has been busy leading up to Sunday’s Super Bowl, working with 25% of the brands and companies that are airing ads for the big game, reports SBJ’s Mollie Cahillane.

Also tonight:

• Panini the latest sponsor of NFL Experience at Super Bowl
• Doug Thornton: The Superdome’s Super Bowl sage
• Clark Hunt backs pro flag league, maybe with NFL brands

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the highlights of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s annual Super Bowl press conference, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie’s intentions to sit out of Celtics sale, U.S. Soccer and MLS’s big legal win and more.

In a record year for Super Bowl advertising revenue, with Fox already hauling in nearly $700 million from ad sales and multiple 30-second spots clocking in north of $8 million, sports marketing and media buying agency Optimum Sports sees it all from the inside.

The company handled 25% of Super Bowl LIX ad spending, marking four straight years of growth.

“This is a behemoth of an event,” said Jeremy Carey, chief investment officer at Optimum Sports. “We’re at a point now where we look at being a Super Bowl advertiser as almost being an official partner of the Super Bowl. Once you make that purchase, and you pay to play, we have to look at it in terms of how we build out a strategy.”

Super Bowl LIX airs Sunday night on Fox, and Carey sees the event as a leveraging moment in the marketplace ahead of the spring’s advertising upfronts.

“Fox is unique, too. They don’t have a lot,” said Carey. “They’re not an NBC or a Paramount or a Disney. Sports makes up a huge percentage of their offering in the marketplace. They’re using the Super Bowl to help them make their market even stronger across the entirety of the rest of their sales model.”

Optimum increasingly values social engagement around the game, witnessing a 27% YOY growth last year in engagement around Super Bowl ads.

Categories up in this year’s Super Bowl include fan-favorites like salty snacks, beverages and quick-service restaurants, as well as telco, tech, travel, financial and auto. Streaming and studios are the only categories that are noticeably down.

“We see new brands and more brands harnessing the power of the full activation plan,” said Optimum Sports Managing Director Kristen Gray. “Maybe brands that aren’t necessarily endemic to sport, which we see more of those around the Super Bowl.”

Added Gray: “We’ve seen newer brands come in and try and bring athletes into their creative, or Fox talent into their creative. That’s an interesting change, where you’re seeing a line change between bringing certain brands and bringing the sports ecosystem into their world.”

That includes brands planning to use the Super Bowl to launch a long-term marketing campaign or product.

Omnicom (Optimum’s parent company) wasn’t surprised at the record pricing going into this year’s Super Bowl.

“We do a tremendous amount of preparation work when it goes into this in terms of understanding categorically, what the movement looks like, and it’s strong,” said Carey.

NBC already calling

Broadcast rights head to NBCUniversal for next year’s Super Bowl, and Optimum says the media company is already picking up the phone to discuss strategy.

“The biggest change for me is it’s even more runway on this stuff,” said Carey. “The logistics of getting everything done? Full disclosure, we’re still working through things on this stuff. Everyone’s looking at their final cuts, social amplification, cultural moments that we might be able to capitalize on.”

Panini makes its first visit to NOLA’s Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, as the venue will host its fourth Super Bowl Experience from tomorrow through Saturday.

The annual fan festival features interactive games, player autographs, photos with the Super Bowl rings and the Vince Lombardi Trophy and exclusive merchandise from the NFL Shop presented by Visa.

Although the fanfest leading up to the 1997 Super Bowl in New Orleans did not have a corporate sponsor, each one since has had a brand partner.

Sunday’s Super Bowl at Caesars Superdome will be the 12th one worked by Doug Thornton, president of North American venues for Legends/ASM Global, and the fourth at the famed building he’s run for 28 years.

This one has easily had the most challenging run-up of any of them. The New Year’s Day terrorist attack on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street chilled the excitement and created justifiable questions around the Super Bowl’s security, before an extremely rare snowstorm dumped 10 inches on a city much more synonymous with flooding and humidity. It will be several weeks before Thornton completely lets his guard down.

“Everybody has to be prepared for the unexpected,” he told me. “Things break, there are always curveballs being thrown at you last minute and the NFL plans for that, we plan for that, we drill for that. Hopefully, we won’t have those instances, but there is always something.”

Overcoming those obstacles just adds to the feeling that Thornton is a guy who has seen it all. The former McNeese State QB began his working life in the oil industry, but gradually shifted into sports during a spell leading the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation. He was hired to run the Superdome in June 1997 and led the building through the tumult of Hurricane Katrina and its subsequent reboundafter the traumatic event.

“He’s an icon in the business. He knows the business well, and he’s still a student of the business,” said Venue Solutions Group Managing Partner Russ Simons. “The continuity makes a difference, and translates into this business environment -- consistency, continuity and understanding of what was thought of before.”

That’s important in the Super Bowl planning context because the event continues to swell in almost every conceivable way, becoming more challenging and potentially unwieldy. Planning by the NFL and Populous’ events master-planning group starts two years out from the game.

“That’s what the NFL and their planners are so good at,” Thornton said. “Taking the footprint in New Orleans and those are very, very tight geographical areas, and they can figure out how to accommodate all the elements that are needed to support the game.”

Trip down memory lane

I asked Thornton for four of the most memorable occurrences from the Super Bowls he’s worked:

• Business travel booked for flights into Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport for Feb. 5 through Sunday is up 100% compared to the number of flights into the city during the same period last year, according to data provided to SBJ by FCM and Corporate Traveler USA. Bookings are also outpacing last month’s Notre Dame-Georgia CFP quarterfinal at the Allstate Sugar Bowl by 450%. FCM and Corporate Traveler are the business travel divisions of Flight Centre Travel Group, one of the world’s largest booking companies. 
• In this week’s SBJ Media newsletter, Mollie Cahillane reports on the role IMG is playing in the NFL’s ambitions in Europe.
• Chiefs owner Clark Hunt blessed the NFL’s plans for a professional flag football league today, sketching out his vision of teams playing under established NFL team names and brands, writes SBJ’s Ben Fischer.

Elsewhere in the industry

• Comcast’s Xfinity telecommunications brand will end its title sponsorship of NASCAR’s second-rung series after 2025, reports SBJ’s Adam Stern, while renewing its broader premier partnership of the sanctioning body for multiple years and with fresh strategies.
• Peacock drew 1 million viewers for Arsenal-Manchester City on Sunday, which is tied for the third-best streaming audience on record in the U.S. for a Premier League match, writes SBJ’s Austin Karp.
• Prime Video greenlit a four-part docuseries, “For the Win: NWSL,” from Words + Pictures, which follows the 2024 NWSL playoffs and championship, notes Cahillane.
• Madison Square Garden Sports, the parent company of the Knicks and Rangers, is facing an uncertain media rights future, reports SBJ’s Chris Smith following the company’s earnings call Tuesday.
• Adam Davis is departing Two Circles in April, notes SBJ’s Terry Lefton. He’s been the managing director of North America since Oct. 2021. 
• On Feb. 12, MLB Network’s offseason morning program “Hot Stove” will broadcast live from the MLB Flagship Store in N.Y., marking the first time MLBN has produced a studio show from that location, writes SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.
• At Padres FanFest on Feb. 1 at Petco Park, the team and Budweiser welcomed fans of legal drinking age to contribute in a small way to the $7 million renovation of the Western Metal Building, notes SBJ’s Bret McCormick.
• In tonight’s op-ed, US Sports Camps COO Siera Love discusses the importance of not just promoting sports for girls but actively supporting individual athletes. “Breaking the rules is the key to shaping a future that’s limitless. That’s what happens when we invest in girls through sports: We unlock the potential of the next generation.”