2019 Super Bowl

After further review, the TV rating for Super Bowl 53 actually didn’t fall to its lowest point in a decade, according to the newest figures from CBS. The company now puts Sunday’s total audience at 112.7 million viewers, not the 100.7 million tally circulated the day after the game. The revision stems from Nielsen’s “Out of Home” metric.

Sunday night’s Super Bowl may not have broken any TV ratings records, but it broke new ground for consumers who preferred to stream the game online. CBS says the game drew an average minute audience (one of the closest digital metrics to the Nielsen average viewership standard) of 2.6 million viewers, up 31% from last year’s Super Bowl, and a new streaming record.

While the New England Patriots bested the L.A. Rams on Sunday in Atlanta during Super Bowl 53, brands were also winning and losing off the field. Some spots, like Google’s ad about its translation service, charmed many viewers. But others like Mint Mobile’s ad about “chunky milk” fell flat.

CBS is almost sold out of its Super Bowl commercial inventory, according to  people with knowledge of the network’s sales process,  nearing an end to what is always a frenzied process to sew up millions of dollars in advertising revenue. The network has secured agreements for the last few slots it has available for broadcast in Super Bowl 53, the people say.

The world’s largest brewer will not say how much it is spending for nearly six minutes of commercials, but industry sources estimate it is more than $50 million. That is up from the $42 million that Kantar Media said the brewer spent for four minutes of ad time last year. It is only part of the company’s strategy to recapture market share from craft beers and Mexican imports.

Here are some things to know about CBS’s coverage Sunday as well as other Super Bowl-related programming on other networks.

Movie studios often use the Super Bowl to drop trailers for their coming blockbusters. Since last year, a rival source of video entertainment has been doing the same. Amazon Prime Video will return to the Super Bowl this year, dropping a 60-second trailer in the third quarter for Hanna, a new drama centered on a powerful young girl who must thwart agents who want to take her down, along with her father. The commercial will show Amazon getting more aggressive in the realm of big-game promotion.

Hosted by James Corden, The World’s Best premieres Sunday after Super Bowl 53. Besides impressing judges RuPaul, Drew Barrymore and Faith Hill, contestants have to break through the “wall of the world” featuring more than 50 experts from 38 different countries who score the competition.

Advertisers are hoping to provide some welcome distraction and entertainment as economic fears persist and the nation’s political climate remains sharply divided. As much as this year’s Super Bowl will be a battle on the field between the New England Patriots and the L.A. Rams, it will be a battle between advertisers over who gets the buzz — and who gets forgotten.

If you think that getting people to advertise during the Super Bowl is easy, think again. In truth, hooking advertisers on TV’s biggest annual event has become a harder sell. The Super Bowl draws more than 100 million viewers annually, resulting in outsize TV ratings and scads of valuable social-media reactions and pass-alongs. And yet, Madison Avenue is vacillating more about whether to buy an ad in the big game than it has in years.

On Sunday, Brown, 67, will host the Super Bowl pregame show for the ninth time, between his current employer, CBS, and his former employer, Fox. For years he has served as the buttoned-up straight man on fall Sundays — on Fox he was opposite Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long; at CBS, it’s Boomer Esiason and Bill Cowher. He’s one of the most ubiquitous presences in sports television — he’s hosted the Super Bowl pregame show more than anyone other than Brent Musburger — and also one of its longest tenured.

Super Bowl advertisers are continuing the trend of the last several years, holding back creative prior to the game. With a week to go before the big TV NFL event on Feb. 3, 24 brands with 60 pieces of creative — teasers and pre-release Super Bowl commercials — have aired on TV through Jan. 27, totaling $2.9 million in TV spend, down from the same period a year ago.

Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan will sit down with President Donald Trump on Friday. Part of it will air during the regular Face the Nation broadcast Sunday morning, while the rest will be shown around 3:30 p.m. ET during CBS’s pregame coverage.

The meteoric rise of Super Bowl ad prices looks to be over. CBS., which will broadcast the big game from Atlanta on Feb. 3, is selling 30-second commercials for $5.1 million to $5.3 million, people familiar with the matter said. That’s roughly the same price as last year, when NBC sold them for $5.24 million, according to research firm Kantar Media.

Coca-Cola is pulling back from the Super Bowl after an 11-year run, opting to run a commercial just before kickoff of the CBS broadcast of the game on Feb. 3, but not in the event itself.

Among the tech innovations on tap are Panasonic 8K cameras, which will be used to generate replays from each end zone, part of the 115 cameras the network will use, including a bevy of Sony 4K replay cameras. And for the first time, CBS will also use a live wireless handheld camera with AR graphics and camera-tracking capability designed to provide real-time virtual graphics from the players’ perspective on the field.

The Garden State is flush in Super Bowl bets. The big game is expected to attract $100 million in wagers for New Jersey’s sportsbooks in the first year that gamblers can legally place bets on games at casinos in the state, a gambling association said on Monday.

Ever since the NFL launched Thursday Night Football, the Super Bowl has been a harder sell for advertisers. But CBS says it has commitments for “more than 90%” of its available commercial inventory with about a month to go before the game.

The Super Bowl may be the biggest sports wagering event in the United States each year, but announcers will not be talking about betting during the broadcast of the big game next month, CBS said on Thursday.

InBev will run eight ads, totaling 5 minutes, 30 seconds, for five brands: Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, Stella Artois and Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer.

A 60-second spot from Venables Bell & Partners will mark the automaker’s 10th year as an advertiser during the big game. The spot will run in the second quarter and will carry an electrification theme that includes all-new Audi e-tron models.

With one month to go, the Big Game market has once again been strong for CBS, according to sources familiar with the network’s Super Bowl ad sales. The network is receiving north of $5 million per 30-second spot.

Maroon 5 will be the halftime performers at the 2019 Super Bowl, two sources confirm to Variety. Reached for comment, an NFP rep tells Variety, “It’s a Super Bowl tradition to speculate about the performers for the Pepsi Halftime Show. We are continuing to work with [longtime sponsor] Pepsi on our plans but do not have any announcements to make on what will be another epic show.”