As they mapped out their fall schedule, Warner Bros. Discovery executives weren’t counting on much money from political advertising during the upcoming election cycle. Political ads favor local buys, of course, especially during the midterms. But then the Cleveland Guardians clinched a spot in the American League Championship Series, and the super PACs came calling. Ohio, as you may have heard, has featured a highly competitive gubernatorial and Senate race this cycle, and those campaigns bought up all the local ad time. This dynamic forced PACs to buy national advertising spots, so the ads also ran in front of viewers across the country.
Every network executive I spoke to reported that political ad revenue this October is essentially double what it was four years ago. And the MLB playoffs were hardly the only factor. The fight for young male voters—a key swing demo in 2024—has supercharged the market. National political ad buys for statewide campaigns have been popping up at an unprecedented rate during college football and NFL games as well. That’s why you’ve seen a lot of ads around the Texas Senate race during Longhorns or Cowboys games, or pertaining to the Ohio races during Buckeyes, Browns, and Bengals contests. “We could tell early on that there was a lot more money out there,” one network ad sales executive said. “We have surpassed every projection that we’ve made, even when we recalibrated, because it was going much better than we thought.”
So while linear TV remains in an irreversible decline, live and monocultural television programming continues to hold enormous value for advertisers. Still, the amount of money flowing into campaigns and PACs this year is so staggering, it has surprised even veteran politicos. With four days to go before the midterms, campaigns and interest groups have spent $11.3 billion on political advertising this year—far more than the $8.9 billion spent in 2022’s midterms, and even surpassing the 2024 presidential cycle, per analysis from Cross Screen Media, a marketing analytics, software, and media-buying firm. “Everything has gone up,” said Michael Beach, Cross Screen Media’s founder. “There’s more money being spent on linear than ever before, because so much money has gone into politics.”
Found Money
While the networks have actually lost share to the streamers this cycle, the size of the pie has gotten so significant that they’re still raking in more money than ever. “Midterm voters tend to skew older, and older voters tend to watch broadcast TV,” one political ad buyer told me. This person said that he’s spending three times more on advertising for this election than he did just four years ago. (“The TV networks are only seeing two times more, because a lot of our spend gets pumped into streaming and YouTube,” he noted.)
In Texas, where James Talarico and Ken Paxton are locked in the most expensive Senate race in history—now approaching $600 million, thanks to a $168 million influx of cash from Elon Musk—some buyers have fundamentally changed their approach. “Based on the number of people in Texas watching the Brewers–Rays World Series, it would still be cost-effective to buy a national spot,” a second political ad buyer told me, citing the premium to place buys in each of the state’s media markets, which would run north of $500,000. “The math works,” the buyer said.
The rate card works for the networks, too. When political campaigns buy TV ads, networks have to give them a preferential deal—the lowest unit rate, in industry jargon. That doesn’t apply to outside groups, like political action committees, which have to buy ads at the top of the rate card. Meanwhile, networks are also benefiting from the swingy nature of both the House and Senate in this cycle. When one campaign or PAC buys an ad in a sporting event, its opponent feels pressure to match it. “This has all combined to create a perfect storm for broadcast stations and networks,” that same political ad buyer told me.
For the networks, of course, it’s all found money—a largely unexpected ad revenue boon that’s pushed an already frothy sports ad sales market into another stratosphere. The market also validates good old-fashioned linear TV as a safe advertising bet, at least for now, even as ad rates go through the roof. “TV sports,” one network executive told me, “is doing very well.”
