NBC Super Bowl Commercials To Cost $3 Million

The Super Bowl has always been a tough ticket, but now NBC is telling advertisers it will cost them $3 million just to get into the game -- for 30 seconds.

NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., plans to announce next week that $3 million will be the entry price for a commercial at the 2009 Super Bowl. While individual slots have sold at that level before, it's never been the starting point for negotiations for the dozens of 30-second ads sold for the game. It represents a price increase of more than 10%, roughly double the usual annual rise.

"If they believe it's a target they can reach, then that's fantastic," Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, said of his sales team.

For this year's Super Bowl, Fox, a unit of News Corp., received about $2.7 million for 30 seconds, though some of the final slots went for about $3 million, according to media buyers.

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