Nickelodeon won’t carry Super Bowl ads for beer, spirits or sportsbooks

Nickelodeon won’t carry Super Bowl ads for beer, spirits or sportsbooks

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Sports Business Journal, the industry’s leading source of sports business news, events and data.

Television’s biggest advertising platform — the Super Bowl — will have a different look for Nickelodeon’s alternate kids-focused telecast in February.

Nickelodeon viewers will see the large majority of ads that run on CBS during the game. Advertisers generally are enthused by the addition of Nickelodeon’s audience, which will expand its reach.

But every Super Bowl has a healthy share of beer, alcohol and sportsbook ads. Nickelodeon is a channel that caters to kids and doesn’t run any advertisement pitching adult products. That means Nickelodeon viewers will not see any Bud Light, Crown Royal or DraftKings ads during its Super Bowl telecast, even as those ads run on CBS.

Want to receive a nightly roundup of sports business news to your inbox? Sign up for Sports Business Journal’s Unpacks Lite newsletter below. If you are on mobile or having any issues, click here to sign up for SBJ’s Unpacks Lite Newsletter.

Instead of seeing, for instance, a Corona ad, Nickelodeon viewers will either get a completely different advertisement sold to another company, a promo from one of Paramount’s businesses, or programming will head back to the game telecast.

Advertisements from Anheuser-Busch InBev, which owns the Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois brands among others, will not air on Nickelodeon during the ad breaks. Neither will any of the other beer, spirits or sportsbook ads that are expected to be sold.

CBS owns the rights to the game and the network’s sales force is overseeing all ad sales for the Nickelodeon production, too. Ad prices for the upcoming Super Bowl are expected to hit $7.5 million per 30-second ad, which would be a record high.

Before last season’s Super Bowl, A-B InBev gave up exclusive rights to the game’s alcohol advertising category. For the previous 34 years, it was the only beer advertiser in the game. A-B InBev still is committed to buying ads during the game and is expected to have around six spots in February’s Super Bowl. Last season, it featured Bud Light, Busch Light and Michelob Ultra for the game, which was carried on Fox.

But last season’s game also featured ads for Blue Moon, Coors Light, Heineken, Michelob Ultra and Miller Lite. Liquor companies such as Crown Royal and Rémy Cointreau also bought ads last year, as did gambling companies DraftKings and FanDuel.

None of those ads will be allowed on Nickelodeon.

This isn’t the first time CBS has had to juggle ads around its Nickelodeon production. Last year, it carried the Broncos-Rams game on Christmas. It also carried the Cowboys-49ers wild-card playoff game in 2022 and a Bears-Saints wild-card playoff game in 2021.

In those games, CBS either modified the ad to feature a different, more kid-friendly brand from the same company, or it ran a promo.

In those previous games, CBS and Nickelodeon had not sold the space to a new advertiser. But those games are not viewed as an advertising showcase in the same way as the Super Bowl, and it’s possible CBS could try to sell an exclusive ad to fill those spots on its Nickelodeon telecast.

John Ourand can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ and read his weekly newsletter and listen to his weekly podcast.