Sunday marked the zenith of political advertisement season. With just 48 hours to go before election day, football fans were subject to an onslaught of local and national political spots throughout the course of the day’s games.
It’s no secret why the ads are so prevalent during football games. The sport remains one of the only places to reliably reach a wide cross-section of Americans. And with campaigns flush with donations this cycle, running ads during college football and NFL broadcasts becomes almost a prerequisite for candidates to get their message out.
While one broadcaster in particular was proud to shut out political advertisements this election season, most networks were happy to accept the financial windfall that comes with selling such desirable inventory to campaigns.
Count Fox among the most welcoming of the bunch. During an earnings call with investors on Monday, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch actually went so far as to apologize to viewers for the volume of political ads shown during the network’s football broadcasts.
“I apologize to anyone who was enjoying their football over the weekend and was bombarded with political ads,” Murdoch joked. The Fox CEO wasn’t actually too upset, however. Earlier in the call, Murdoch cited that Fox had generated “record political revenue” on ads during the quarter and for the year.
And as grating as the political advertisements that viewers have been subjected to for the last several months have been, one can hardly blame a network like Fox for taking advantage of such a lucrative ad sales opportunity.
Political advertisement spots are really only purchased at this magnitude every four years during presidential election cycles. Given the precarious financial position legacy media companies like Fox find themselves in, it would almost be a dereliction of duty not to run as many political ads as possible.
That’s unfortunate for the viewer, many of whom see live sports as an escape from the realities of life — including politics. The good news is, Monday Night Football should be the last big push for campaigns ahead of Tuesday’s election. Then we can all sit back and enjoy our insurance commercials in peace.
[X/@JBFlint, @bristei]
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.