Super Bowl Spending, Streaming & Amazon's Big TV Advertising Push

Welcome to the latest episode of the Full-Court Finance podcast from Zacks Investment Research where Associate Stock Strategist Ben Rains dives into the big business behind the Super Bowl as the streaming TV market heats up. Plus, we look at Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) huge television advertising push and see who are the biggest Super Bowl spenders.

Super Bowl LIII turned out to be a boring game, which led to the lowest overnight ratings in 10 years, which came after the NFL’s regular season ratings across CBS (NYSE:CBS) , Fox (NASDAQ:FOXA) , NBC (NASDAQ:CMCSA) , and ESPN (NYSE:DIS) climbed in 2018 after years of declines. Despite the play on the field, the big game once gained proved why it is so important to businesses.

Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) YouTube TV sponsored CBS’ pre-game show in a continued push from the streaming TV service to entice sports fans to cut the cord. Sports are the last great hope for live TV and advertisers in the age of non-ad supported platforms from Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) to Spotify (NYSE:T) . Therefore, companies like Google and Amazon have tried to position themselves as sports friendly in the streaming age.

Meanwhile, companies shelled out roughly $5 million for 30-second ad slots during Super Bowl LIII. Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:BUD) was one of the biggest spenders Sunday night as the firm tries to adapt to quickly shifting drinking habits in the U.S. This move marks the continuation of the company’s dedication to Super Bowl advertising. In fact, Anheuser-Busch InBev has spent the most of any company on Super Bowl ads since 1995, to beat out Pepsi (NASDAQ:PEP) , Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) , General Motors (NYSE:GM) , and many other big names.

The Super Bowl also highlighted Amazon’s TV advertising push, which comes after CEO Jeff Bezos, who actively avoided big national campaigns for years, embraced television in order to build up brands such as Alexa-supported devices and Prime. In doing so, Amazon has become one of the biggest advertisers in the U.S., behind only Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) , AT&T (NYSE:T) , Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A, and Comcast. This comes as Amazon expands its own digital ad business to try to grab market share away from Google and Facebook’s (NASDAQ:FB) duopoly.

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