Fox says Super Bowl ads sold out at record $5.6 million per spot

Fox Sports has sold out its inventory of Super Bowl ads after pricing 30-second spots for television’s biggest annual event at a record $5.6 million.

Fox finished selling all 77 national spots Friday, according to Seth Winter, executive VP for sports sales at Fox Sports. He said most ads for the Super Bowl tend to sell out around Christmas, or even in January. “Clearly the NFL is still the most powerful media platform in all of sports and all of television, ”he said. “Advertisers have seen the restoration of healthy ratings and an environment that doesn’t create caution on their part, so they’ve dived headfirst into the NFL.”

While single 30-second commercials for the Feb. 2 game in Miami cost $5.6 million, discounts were offered to those that bought more. Every ad sold for more than $5 million, except for one company whose longstanding bulk order kept its pricing under that threshold, Winter said. Using rough calculations, the total sales figure probably eclipsed $400 million.

The Super Bowl is the mostwatched TV event of the year in the U.S., and ad sales typically fluctuate based on the health of the economy and interest in the NFL. Both factors became tailwinds for Fox this season: The league’s regular-season ratings are up, and U.S. stocks have been nearing all-time highs.

This will be Fox’s ninth Super Bowl broadcast. Fox, CBS and NBC rotate rights to the game as part of their billion-dollar national broadcast deals. The NFL and Fox agreed this year to fewer commercial breaks for the Super Bowl, a decision that didn’t change the total number of ads.