With the NFL’s return this week, the last of the major televised sports league will come back into play after the series of cancellations and postponements due to COVID-19. And we expect the NFL to return with a bang, with viewers even more engaged than past years given their pent-up demand for live sports.
We’ve seen from leagues that have already returned that viewers are extremely invested in these restarts and new seasons. For example, the NBA restart Opening Day games on TNT (7/30/20) outperformed the NBA’s Opening Day games last fall 2019 on TNT (10/22/19) by 49% at driving consumer Search Engagement for the brands advertised during the games on a per-person, per-second basis.
And the return of live sports has been particularly good for auto advertisers, who rely on live sports as an essential part of their advertising strategies. Automakers were 63% more effective at driving Search Engagement with ads (per-person, per-second) during the NBA restart’s Opening Weekend compared to primetime programming.
This all bodes well for automakers with the NFL’s return, given the NFL has historically been the strongest platform for TV advertisers with its unparalleled reach and loyal viewership.
According to EDO’s ranking of 2019 TV programming, the Super Bowl was the #1 program for driving viewer Search Engagement with ads in 2019. The NFL playoffs and Sunday Night Football also ranked in the Top 10 programs, while Monday Night Football came in at #11 . NFL programming has huge power for advertisers to create meaningful engagement with tuned-in viewers.
And the NFL is extremely important for automakers, in particular. In last year’s NFL Kickoff game (Sept 5, 2019: Packers vs. Bears), Hyundai ran six spots and drove near Super Bowl levels of Search Engagement – an extremely impressive feat. In the first week of Genesis’ Monday Night Football Halftime Show sponsorship on ESPN last season (Sept 9, 2019: Texans vs. Saints), Genesis drove 13.7x as much Search Engagement as the brand would have seen without the sponsorship.
So in a normal year, automakers can expect big returns from their NFL investments. But this year, the NFL may take on even greater importance for advertisers given changes to other programming brought on by COVID-19.
Normally, College Football is the second best platform for advertisers behind the NFL. The NCAA football semifinals and championships were two of the Top 10 TV Programs driving consumer Search Engagement with ads in 2019, with the NCAA New Year’s Bowl Games also falling within the Top 20 programs.
But this year, multiple Power Five conferences have postponed their seasons, and the fate of the remaining seasons and College Bowls is uncertain as the pandemic changes daily. Additionally, the pandemic shut down TV production for primetime entertainment shows, leaving networks without new programs in their schedules until much later in the fall than usual. So even though the NFL will be airing head-to-head with the NBA and NHL playoffs for the first time, the NFL may become even more important for advertisers this year as a reliable and highly impactful advertising platform amid the uncertainty – as long as the league can continue to play.
As EDO’s President & CEO, Kevin Krim, shared with Automotive News’ Vince Bond, “‘Sunday Night Football,’ ‘Monday Night Football’ and ‘Thursday Night Football’ are all incredibly valuable franchises, [but] if suddenly there’s an outbreak the morning of one of those games, they’re not going to be able to play. There is this risk that some of these games could just not happen.”
If games are canceled due to COVID-19 (as we’ve seen with the MLB) or if the season is cut short, automakers will need to have contingency plans in place. But if the NFL’s preparation and precautions allow the league to play without interruption, we expect advertisers, and automakers in particular, to continue to invest heavily in the NFL and to see a strong return on those investments.