• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 15, 2023

Amid all the Super Bowl post-analyses you've already been deluged by -- audience ratings, best/worst commercial reviews, all sorts of scientifically calculated ad performance metrics -- I bet you haven't seen one on the sponsor value of the halftime shows, yet.

Well, I just got results indicating that Apple Music's sponsorship of Super Bowl LVII's halftime show on Fox generated a sponsor value of $21.5 million. That's a tad higher than the estimate sponsor value perennial Super Bowl halftime sponsor Pepsi got during NBC's coverage of Super Bowl LVI last year, according to the analysis conducted by Relo Metrics (formerly GumGum Sports).

That said, it doesn't recoup the cost of what Apple Music shelled out -- a reported $50 million per year for the five years of its Super Bowl halftime sponsorship deal with the NFL.

Still, Relo says it marks the third consecutive increase in Super Bowl halftime show sponsorship value, though it likely was due more to social media surrounding it, than the televised coverage of it, per se.

"The biggest incremental gain in value for the brand is likely to have come from the huge social impact of the game, along with Apple’s integrations across its billions of devices and its entertainment applications for music and TV," explains Relo CEO Jay Prasad, noting: "The key lesson from this year’s halftime show is that the sponsor media value of the live TV broadcast in the U.S. could have been even higher had the brand invested in more in-stadium integrations that were camera visible -- for example LED digital logos or creative integrations such as drones. And while Apple Music’s broadcast graphics performed well on visibility, additional value could have been realized had the on-screen duration of the broadcast graphics matched or exceeded Pepsi’s in 2022.”

In case you're interested, here's how Relo's methodology for calculating the halftime show sponsorship value utilizes AI-powered computer visions technology analyzing and calculating the equivalent paid broadcast TV value.

Here's how they visualize it: