• by Wayne Friedman , August 21, 2009

An expected weak NFL television advertising market has begun to slowly move -- but a cloud over ratings guarantees could complicate the process.

Like non-sports TV programming, the NFL's TV advertising sales continues to be a late-moving and fragile marketplace, with most of the bigger agencies yet to do deals with CBS, Fox and NBC.

So far, media executives say cost-per-thousand viewers (CPM) pricing is down anywhere from 3% to 4% versus a year ago --- on CBS and Fox for Sunday afternoon games, NBC for Sunday evening, and ESPN on Monday night.

Unlike the network prime-time market, NFL pricing has not declined as much as many broadcast and cable prime-time shows, where CPMs for network, cable, and syndication programmers could be off 6% to 9% or more.

Media executives estimate that NFL unit pricing for top games on CBS and Fox will be around $275,000 to $300,000 and more for a 30-second commercial this year; upwards of $400,000 and more for NBC; and about $300,000 and more on ESPN.

"The NFL market appears to seem somewhat healthier than prime time," says Kevin Collins, senior vp and director of national broadcast USA for Initiative. "The NFL ratings continue to be consistent from a price-value standpoint."

Like the prime-time marketplace, the NFL has been hit with weaker advertising -- in part from the still-suffering domestic automotive business, as well as some loss in financial service advertisers, and other TV marketers.

One thorny issue still surrounds this year's deal-making: That of commercial ratings, so-called C3 guarantees -- commercial ratings plus three days of DVR playback. TV advertisers want them; NFL television networks have been largely opposed.

"The networks are still resistant," says Andy Donchin, executive vice president and director of national broadcast at Carat. "It's less to do with Nielsen. There is no upside, and it is very self-serving." Typically, commercial ratings can be 1% to 5% less compared to live program-only ratings. Media executives say the differences with live sports are smaller than with other programming.

While TV networks have had no problem giving advertisers commercial ratings guarantees for regular prime-time programming over the last several years, they have issues with NFL programming -- specifically CBS and Fox.

Nielsen said that last year, it had some problems in identifying commercials in regional NFL games for both CBS and Fox broadcasts. But now, Nielsen says the problems have been solved going into this NFL season. Still, the networks would like more time -- perhaps another year under their belt -- to make sure. A Fox spokesman said deals would not be done with C3 for this year.

That said, media buyers are uncertain why NBC's single game, "Sunday Night Football," has not been offering TV marketers C3 guarantees. A NBC spokesman would only confirm that C3 deals were not being offered to advertisers. He did not elaborate.

In regard to C3 guarantees with all the networks, Donchin said: "This is something we are going to bring up with them in negotiations. I would hope all the other agencies would still be adamant as well."

Cable sports network ESPN's "Monday Night Football" has been the lone channel to do deals with C3. Since the start of the year, ESPN now says about 60% of its clients strike deals with C3, while 40% take deals on previous 'program live' guarantees. Ed Erhardt, president of ESPN customer sales and marketing, says some advertisers just prefer the older approach.

Media-buying executives also suggest that because ESPN packages a mix of other, non-live game sports programming with "MNF," TV marketers need C3 guarantees for comparison to other parts of their TV media plans.

In ad sales this year, ESPN says that both NFL and college football business has been brisk. While he admits that the sports TV marketplace had been tough over the past year, Erhardt did say recent third-quarter scatter business is much improved from the third-quarter scatter business of a year ago.

ESPN runs fewer commercials than the broadcast networks' NFL games -- just 46 30-second commercial units. One media agency executive said because of this, ESPN is well sold for "Monday Night Football" this year -- it has either closed or is near closing virtually 90% of its inventory.

The NFL marketplace was pushed back a bit this year -- in part because the broadcast, cable and syndication marketplaces were only completed in the last week of July and the first weeks of August. This has shoved NFL deal-making into mid- to-late August.