Star Salaries for Super Bowl Ads: $3M-$5M Fees Are Norm This Year as Spots Lean Into Celebs
In a splintered media world, there is only one true vestige of monoculture left: The Super Bowl. The Big Game, which will be played Feb. 9 and televised by Fox, averages over 100 million viewers, a staggering number that dwarfs every other piece of entertainment in a given year.
For big advertisers, a chance to highlight their brand or product in front of that audience is without peer, and they are willing to pay handsomely to do so.
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“It’s the only place to be able to aggregate this type of scale quickly, and I think it’s a safe haven,” says Fox Sports executive vp ad sales, Mark Evans.
Fox has secured an eye-popping $8 million for 30-second ad spots during the game, a new record, and brands pour millions more into producing them, and a chance to create their own pop culture moments.
“The stakes are very, very high, and not every brand can win,” says Georgie Jeffreys, the head of marketing for Uber. “There’s only going to be a handful of brands that are super memorable the next day for most people.”
So how does a brand stand out? A metric ton of star power helps. The Super Bowl has more celebrities per hour than probably anything on TV (perhaps even the Oscars). Tim Curtis, senior partner at WME, estimates that this year’s Super Bowl ads will feature between 80 and 100 celebrities, from megawatt stars to comedians to digital creators.
“That’s a lot, and you need to sort of break out from that,” Curtis says. “But unless you’ve got very, very, strong, usually comedic creative that doesn’t involve a celebrity, your spot’s probably going to be forgotten versus talked about more widely the next day.”
So for many brands, big stars are the big bet. Uber Eats has Matthew McConaughey leading, joined by Kevin Bacon, Greta Gerwig, Charli XCX and Martha Stewart in cameo roles; Stella Artois has Matt Damon and David Beckham playing estranged twins; Michelob Ultra has Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara playing pickleball villains; Hellmann’s mayonnaise reunited Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan (joined by Sydney Sweeney in a cameo role) to re-create the famous deli scene in When Harry Met Sally. The list goes on and on.
And the talent doesn’t come cheap. Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that A-list actors and music stars are scoring $3 million to $5 million paydays to front Super Bowl commercials, though cameo appearances (which may require only a couple hours on set) have a lower rate.
According to data from iSpot, which tracks commercials, in 2010 only about one-third of Super Bowl ads had celebrities. Since the pandemic, that number has soared to more than 70 percent of spots, with ads featuring multiple cameos also booming.
In fact, cameo appearances can play a surprisingly important role in a Super Bowl ad, not only to help a brand stand out, but to help it resonate with other target demographics.
“Each person in the cast, again, they have to amplify the creative idea, they can’t just be there because they appeal to Gen Z or they appeal to moms,” Jeffreys says. “The ensemble allows us to actually tap into lots of different fan bases and ensure that there’s something for everyone, which is why the extension of having someone like Greta Gerwig in there and Charli XCX and Martha Stewart all became really important.”
But Super Bowl commercials also give talent a chance to bolster their own brands, or direct attention to causes important to them. Damon, for example, is highlighting Water.org, which he co-founded, in the Stella spot, which he hopes will stand out.
“For us at water.org, there’s been an attempt for us to try to figure out how to cut through and get things across,” Damon says. “At this point, I’m convinced the only way to cut through any of the noise is with a spot that’s funny and fun. Ben [Affleck] and I did one last year [for Dunkin’]. Ben directed this one, but the concept seemed so in line with what they wanted to say, and it gave us a chance to make it entertaining and fun…. It just made sense on a number of levels.”
But not even Super Bowl commercials are immune to the production slowdown impacting Hollywood. Sources say that talent fees for this year’s game are flat from last year, after years of going up like clockwork. And there are fewer mega deals for talent than in past years (i.e., Larry David’s crypto-driven $10 million payday for FTX in 2022).
But the costs are still high, very, very high. Sources say that the all-in cost for Super Bowl commercial is $10 million to $12 million on the low end, and $20 million plus on the high end, enormous numbers for pieces of content that are 30 seconds to a minute long.
That includes the fee for Fox, of course, and the fees for talent, though production costs can add millions more, particularly if hit music is used (where fees will usually be six figures), if A-list directors are on board, or if the right to specific IP is required (i.e., a signoff from Warner Bros. for When Harry Met Sally). And most brands now build social and digital campaigns to keep the momentum going, and those efforts can stretch well into the seven figures themselves.
And even though Super Bowl LIX is still days away, the high stakes and high costs mean that many brands are already thinking about 2026, when Super Bowl LX will be played on NBC.
“We have our first Super Bowl offer already for 2026, which we’re negotiating right now,” Curtis says. “So there is a brand that’s actually focusing on next year already instead of worrying about this year.”
As multiple marketers have told THR, the extra time allows them to lock in not only better rates, but an opportunity to hone the creative that will (hopefully) stand out.
“I always say that one of the best things when you’re planning for a Super Bowl or planning for the year is to have the luxury of time to really go out and craft and vet and build and choose the very best assets, the very best creative for something like the Super Bowl stage, which is a significant investment for us,” says Ricardo Marques, vp marketing for Michelob Ultra.
And while a Super Bowl spot might be a modest investment for a company like PepsiCo or GM, which spend billions of dollars annually on marketing, for other brands it is a much riskier bet.
Danny Winer, the CEO of direct-to-consumer cookware brand HexClad, says that his company — which is making its Super Bowl debut this year with a spot starring chef Gordon Ramsay and comedian Pete Davidson — originally joked around internally about buying a spot, before deciding to actually pull the trigger.
“The more we bounced around the idea we were like, ‘What the hell, we’ve gambled a bunch of times on ourselves, let’s gamble one more time,’” Winer says. “To pay for this, I’ve got to start driving Ubers on the weekend, it’s so expensive.”
This story first appeared in the Feb. 5 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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