• by Wayne Friedman , September 11, 2020

Signaling a strong return for the NFL season, NBC Sports says Thursday night's "NFL Kickoff" game had “double digit” percentage gains in overall advertising revenues for the season’s first game between Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans versus the year before.

NBC says the average cost per 30-second commercial is “near $900,000,” with all in-game inventory sold out.

By comparison, the cost for a 30-second TV commercial on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” for the 2019-2020 season averaged $617,920, according to Standard Media Index.

The average unit price when looking at all NFL regular-season games was $424,000, up 7.7% from the previous season. NBC enjoyed a 4.7% gain in pricing over 2018, while Fox was up 13.6%, CBS was 7.4% higher, and ESPN increased 6.0%.

Total NFL advertising for NFL regular-season and post-season games was $3.72 billion, according to SMI.

NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” has been the top-rated U.S. TV series for the last nine seasons.

In 2019, “SNF” was up 6.1% to 20.09 million Nielsen-measured viewers.