The 2023 Super Bowl Broadcast Won't Feature Crypto Ads
Besides the teams competing and the halftime show at the Super Bowl VII, there's one big difference between this year's broadcast and last year's: no crypto commercials.
Last year's Super Bowl LVI had so many splashy crypto advertisements it was dubbed the "Crypto Bowl." FTX, Crypto.com, Coinbase, and other cryptocurrency platforms shelled out the big bucks to get an advertisement spot during the broadcast. This year, however, there will be no crypto ads.
Though some of those companies bought several spots early, according to Sports Business Journal—including Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, which had purchased a 60 second ad before it filed for bankruptcy—all have since backed out. Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports, said most 30 second ads sold for between $6 million and $7 million. Crypto ads are not banned, despite tweets suggesting otherwise; rather, no crypto company purchased an ad spot during this year's broadcast.
The crypto industry is struggling, as evidenced by the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange. The FTX drama has threatened to implicate its celebrity ambassadors, including Larry David—who starred in the 2022 Super Bowl ad as a person uninterested in cryptocurrency. David is among the stars being sued over FTX's bankruptcy, and the lawsuit calls out the comedian's participation in the commercial.
"The ad—the only Super Bowl commercial David ever appeared in—featured David being a skeptic on such historically important inventions as the wheel, the fork, the toilet, democracy, the light bulb, the dishwasher, the Sony Walkman, and, of course, FTX, and cautioned viewers, ‘Don’t be like Larry,'" the lawsuit says. Also named in the suit are Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Shaquille O’Neal, Naomi Osaka, and Stephen Curry.
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