World Cup sponsors spending $600m on Brazil network

When Brazil hosts the World Cup later this year, it will be like having the Super Bowl every day for an entire month. Eight marketers are paying Brazil’s dominant TV network Globo a total of $600 million for a TV presence around the soccer games and related coverage.

At $75 million per sponsor, that’s the equivalent of almost 20 thirty-second Super Bowl spots each for AmBev, Coca-Cola, Banco Itau, Johnson & Johnson, Hyundai, Nestle, wireless business Oi and local retailer Magazine Luiza.

What does a 20-Super-Bowl-spot budget buy you on Brazil’s TV Globo? Marketing Director Anco Saraiva breaks it down:

Each of the eight marketers will get a minimum of 1,120 video insertions, he said. That includes 451 thirty-second TV commercials, hundreds of quick mentions with visuals when announcers talk about World Cup games, and 359 vinhetas, 5-second commercials created by Globo that feature four marketers at a time and run at the beginning and end of soccer games and other programming, and during commercial breaks.

Globo will broadcast all 64 World Cup games on its single channel, with soccer matches running most days for the entire month until about 7:30pm, ending in time for Globo to run near-normal prime-time programming, which is mostly telenovelas and the nightly news. Brazil has won the World Cup five times, more than any other nation, but hasn’t hosted the soccer championship since 1950.

Although ads won’t get the kind of wild acclaim and intense scrutiny that Super Bowl spots draw in the US, Brazilian ad agencies for World Cup sponsors are in overdrive churning out enough new TV ads so viewers don’t get bored. No one wants to watch the same commercial 451 times.

Saraiva estimates an audience that will range between 15 and more than 40 ratings points for World Cup games, featuring the strongest teams like Brazil and Germany, with an average of about 25 points.

Globo will squeeze in 112 commercials and 112 vinhetas per sponsor during and around the games played between June 6 and July 13, 2014, but that’s not nearly enough World Cup commercial space. More spots will pop up in and around any program that mentions the World Cup, from morning show “Bom dia Brasil” to the evening news, and including plenty of sports shows like “Esporte Espectacular.” The World Cup program kicked off last month, starting with the December 6, drawing that divided the 32 participating countries into eight groups. – Adage

For marketers in Brazil who really want to double down on their soccer, Globo also offers a separate package from Globo for non-World Cup soccer this year. That also costs about $75 million for each of six sponsors, and four of Globo’s World Cup sponsors – AmBev, Coca-Cola, Banco Itau and J&J – have signed up for it, too. (Apart from their TV deals with Globo, those four along with Hyundai and Oi also have World Cup arrangements negotiated with World Cup organising body FIFA). – Adage