• by Wayne Friedman , November 22, 2024

Next Thursday’s NFL Thanksgiving games are seeing a 16% rise in 30-second unit pricing to an average $1.45 million on NBC, Fox and CBS, according to Guideline’s Forward Bookings data.

This is around three times the unit pricing of non-Thanksgiving NFL games this season. A year ago, NFL set a record of 34.1 million viewers watching Thanksgiving games.

In addition, Guideline says, pricing for Thanksgiving weekend games on Saturday and Sunday is 11% higher to $576,000 for a 30-second unit.

Thanksgiving weekend sports programming (Thursday, November 28, and Sunday, December 1, 2024) is currently at $570 million in total ad revenue on U.S. broadcast networks -- including Amazon Prime Video’s Black Friday NFL game.

When adding other sports content on cable, the total climbs to $624 million.

In addition to NFL games, at least 14 college football games will air on broadcast and cable. Thirty-second college football games on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend on ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC have climbed 12% to $133,000.

Overall sports programming will account for at least 84% of all broadcast dollars during the holiday weekend, with NFL games accounting for 69% of all ad spending, says Guideline.

Guideline's Forward Bookings data represents ad spend that has been committed by its contributing agency partners for upcoming, yet-to-run inventory.

Guideline, which owns Standard Media Index, Lumina, and SQAD, captures actual agency invoicing data from all major holding companies and most major independent media agencies.