Michael R. Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has secured a 60-second advertising spot to air nationally during next month’s Super Bowl telecast, an ad buy that will most likely cost at least $10 million.
Hours after The New York Times reported Mr. Bloomberg’s plans, President Trump’s re-election campaign said that it, too, had reserved 60 seconds’ worth of advertising during the game for roughly $10 million.
The dueling ads on the year’s biggest night of television are evidence that the two New York billionaires are preparing for a schoolyard brawl on the national airwaves over the coming months, with each increasingly willing to dip into his vast resources — Mr. Bloomberg is spending his own fortune, and Mr. Trump has a nine-figure campaign war chest — to broadcast their messages.
“The biggest point is getting under Trump’s skin,” said Michael Frazier, a spokesman for the Bloomberg campaign. By “taking the fight to Trump,” Mr. Frazier said, “the ad is part of Mike’s strategy of running a national campaign that focuses on states where the general election will be decided, parts of the country that are often overlooked.”
Aides to Mr. Bloomberg, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said his Super Bowl ad would be a new spot that has not yet aired. They would not specify the cost of the ad, but executives at Fox, which is broadcasting the game on Feb. 2, have said they were seeking “north of $5 million” per 30-second spot.
The Trump campaign’s decision to advertise during the Super Bowl, which was first reported by Politico, continues a strategy of advertising during major sporting events.
“President Trump made the unprecedented decision to keep the campaign open following his first election, which allows us to do things like buying a Super Bowl ad,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign. “We got in early, which gave us prime ad position early in the game.”
It was not clear when during the game Mr. Bloomberg’s ad would air. The Super Bowl is regularly the most watched single television program in any given year; last year’s game drew 98.2 million viewers on CBS.
Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign has continued to set records for political advertising by a presidential candidate, having already spent nearly $170 million on television and digital advertising, according to Advertising Analytics, an ad tracking firm. Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire media owner and former mayor of New York, is funding his campaign with his own money and is not soliciting donations.
“We have the means to raise a national campaign unlike any other candidate,” Mr. Frazier said.
Mr. Bloomberg has made targeting Mr. Trump a core element of his ad strategy. Before he announced his candidacy, he pledged to spend $100 million on ads criticizing the president. And since he began his bid, his campaign has unloaded a barrage of Facebook attack ads in general-election swing states, seeking to erode support for Mr. Trump by highlighting what Mr. Bloomberg calls his broken promises on infrastructure, health care and solving dysfunction in Washington.
Super Bowl ads are rarely seen in presidential politics. Though some campaigns have made local advertising buys during past Super Bowls, a national buy has often been out of reach, given the expense. It is also usually viewed as wasteful to pay to reach a 50-state audience rather than buying ads in key states where campaigns would prefer to target their message.
But Mr. Bloomberg is running an unconventional primary campaign with a heavy national emphasis, choosing to avoid the four states that hold the first caucuses and primaries in February and instead focusing his efforts on Super Tuesday on March 3, when 14 states will vote.
“It’s actually smart for Bloomberg,” said Ken Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. “Bloomberg is running a national campaign, and the most efficient way to reach a lot of people in a national campaign is buying an ad in a top-rated show. And as expensive as it is, it’s cheaper than buying the ads market by market.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign also has deep pockets. It said last week that it had raised $46 million in the last three months of 2019 and was entering 2020 with $102.7 million in cash on hand.
The Super Bowl ads will air at a politically potent time: The Iowa caucuses are the day after the game (though Mr. Bloomberg has said he is not competing in them), and Mr. Trump is scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address the night after that.
The Super Bowl broadcast has often avoided the rancor of national politics. Perhaps the most recent national advertisement that waded into political territory was a 30-second ad featuring Tim Tebow, then a recent college football star, talking about his anti-abortion views, which aired during the 2010 matchup between the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts.
Presidential campaigns have advertised during major sporting events before, however. In October, the Trump campaign made a seven-figure ad buy during Game 7 of the World Series, pushing back on the impeachment inquiry in Washington. And in 2016, with just over a week to go before Election Day, Mr. Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns each purchased multiple ads during Game 7 of that year’s World Series.
Source: Football - nytimes.com
