• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 6, 2014

My healthcare company is raising its premiums 25%. In this economy, even ad sellers are only figuring on about a 3% rise in total revenue this year. Inflation rate? Still microscopic by historical standards.

What do you really need to have? Supply and demand rule in all markets despite “current prevailing wisdom.”

By this estimation, we can only guess that next year’s Super Bowl will see, say, a $5 million price tag for a 30-second commercial? Compared with health insurance, the Super Bowl is even more of a necessity for media planners. Where else these days can they get a 35 rating among 18-49 viewers -- and mountains of after-market spin/buzz data on how well their commercials sucked... or prospered?

Beyond the Super Bowl, what do you think the NFL’s TV networks -- Fox, NBC, CBS, ESPN and NFL Network -- are going to charge next year for regular season games? You wouldn’t be wrong to get queasy and barf about a 15% hike over what marketers paid this year. And that will probably include a number of blow-out games similar to how the Seahawks demolished the Broncos.

Surely, Starbucks’s hasn’t escalated its price for a latte that much. Coffee is a volume business. The NFL?  Only 16 games for each team -- versus 82 in the NBA and 162 in Major League Baseball. Maybe the NFL is thinking of expanding to an 18-game season -- if it can slip a fast one by the players and their union.

Players can get injured, and average citizens are also going to need medical attention sometime. Where are marketers of male-targeted brands – such as automobiles, mobile phone services, video games and theatrical movies -- going to go? Daytime syndicated court shows? It’s gridiron-land -- and here’s your happy and higher price tag.

Maybe a media planner or marketing executive at Anthem Blue Cross would like to give me a call  and we can find that supply-and-demand performance health metric -- in the media and elsewhere. Let’s run, bike, or lift weights. You win? I pay. I win? I’m in your next commercial -- when the New York Giants make their CBS night debut.