Delving Deeper into Spanish-language Super Bowl Ads

Any marketer’s dream is to be directly involved in a Super Bowl ad. The NFL’s championship game is broadcast in over 130 countries in over 30 languages. Domestically,  only in English and Spanish. While it is known that 2024 English-language Super Bowl ads are known to have cost between US $6.5 and US$ 7 million, what do we know about the economics of Spanish-language Super Bowl advertising? What is the Spanish-language audience size and trend? How does it compare with soccer match audiences? How many brands are part of the English and Spanish broadcast? What’s really in it for brands? Let’s find out.

Cheryl Gresham, VP and CMO at Verizon Value, tells Portada that compared to the English-language broadcast, there is a “lower cost of entry and a smaller audience, but we believe it’s important for us to be there because of the relevance of the Spanish-language audience. It’s a great statement that Univision is broadcasting the Super Bowl in Spanish; we want to treat it like the great deal it is.” Total by Verizon, a brand in Verizon Value’s portfolio, will be a Spanish-language Super Bowl Advertiser.

” It’s a great statement that Univision is broadcasting the Super Bowl in Spanish; We want to treat it like the great deal it is.”

Many brands have jumped on the opportunity. Last week, Portada broke the news that Japanese automaker Toyota will be participating with a Spanish Super Bowl ad. Other brands participating in TelevisaUnivision’s Super Bowl broadcast, streamed over VIX, include Audi, Nissan, Metro by T-Mobile, and TurboTax.

Super Bowl in Spanish: What is the Price of a Spanish-language Spot?

To evaluate the pricing of Spanish-language Super Bowl spots, it is essential to consider that they are delivered to a much more targeted audience than the massive English-language spots. Hence, the CPM charged in Spanish is likely higher. In addition, it might be said that since Hispanic family gatherings and parties tend to be larger than those of other families in the U.S., the co-viewing factor of Spanish-language Super Bowl broadcasts will be higher. Yet, the Spanish-language Super Bowl audience lies below 2% of the English-language audience (see table below). So, what is the estimated price of a 30-second spot for the Super Bowl in Spanish? Insiders tell Portada that the price is about 10% of the English-language spot, so between US$ 0.65 and US$ 0.7 million, excluding production costs.

How Competitive is the Super Bowl When Attracting Hispanic Audiences?

Super Bowl in Spanish vs. English-Broadcast*

Let’s face it: American Football is not a ‘culturally’ Hispanic sport like soccer (or fútbol.) That is one of the reasons the NFL is investing in the La Cultura Hispanic outreach initiative, as Javier Farfan, cultural marketing strategist at the NFL, tells us. That is why the Spanish-language Super Bowl’s audience, while sizable, is well below the 3% mark of the English-language broadcast audience. as shown in the table on the left.
The table also reveals a big difference in the audience size of the Super Bowl in Spanish depending on which broadcaster owns the Spanish-language Super Bowl rights in a given year. In 2022, NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo became the first Spanish-language broadcast network to air the Super Bowl. That licensing deal resulted in 1.9 million viewers, twice as many as Fox Deportes drew in 2023 (951,000 viewers) and at least three times as many as the audiences attracted by broadcasters in 2021 and before. The recent Super Bowl was broadcast by TelevisaUnivision, another leader in Hispanic broadcasting, and surpassed the record set in 2022. TelevisaUnivision set a new audience record in Spanish with 2.3 million viewers in 2024.

How Hispanic Soccer Audiences Compare with the Super Bowl

Viewership  Soccer Broadcasts in the U.S*

Soccer viewership data helps to contextualize the Super Bowl’s relevance for Hispanic audiences. The 2022 World Cup final between Argentina and France averaged 16.8 million viewers, including streaming on Fox. Telemundo’s live coverage in Spanish generated an average audience of approximately 9 million viewers, including streaming, a substantially larger audience than those recorded for the Super Bowl in Spanish.
The largest U.S. TV audience for any single-network soccer match broadcast is 25.4 million on Fox for the 2015 Women’s World Cup final that saw the U.S. beat Japan. It also averaged 1.27 million U.S. viewers on Telemundo. In 2023, the clash between Liverpool and Arsenal captured the attention of 1.96 million viewers; the Liga MX  match Club America vs. Guadalajara in May 2023 averaged. 2.184 million viewers, an audience figure similar to what the Super Bowl in Spanish commanded when Telemundo had the rights in 2022.
It can be concluded that the Superbowl in Spanish can reach a similar audience size compared to major Liga MX matches but lies much below most men’s soccer World Cup matches, certainly the World Cup final.

Telemundo’s Super Bowl in Spanish broadcast in 2022 set a record of 1.9 million viewers.

* Note: Avgr. Viewers in millions
Source: Nielsen and Broadcasters