Fox Nears a Sellout on Its Super Bowl Spots

Fox is approaching a sellout of advertising time on next month’s Super Bowl telecast despite raising the price for a half-minute slot by a whopping 23% over a year ago.

Network officials said Wednesday that four 30-second commercial spots remained unsold out of an inventory of 58 ad slots on the Super Bowl telecast set for Jan. 31 in Miami. Fox said four or five advertisers were discussing buying the slots, which cost $1.6 million each.

The pace of sales has been slower than the pace NBC set last year when it sold out its Super Bowl ads two months ahead of the game. But Fox is getting a much higher price than the $1.3 million NBC charged for ads on the last Super Bowl.

The main reason for higher prices is that advertisers can still count on the Super Bowl telecast to reliably deliver in excess of 100 million viewers--the biggest television audience of the year.