World Series viewership and the cost of an ad
The Graph below gives the average number of viewers, by year, for a World Series game.
1. What do you see?
2. What do you wonder?
It’s well known that a Super Bowl commercial costs a ton of money. What about World Series
commercials?
Suppose you are representing a company that wants to buy World Series commercial time over the next
several years. How much should the company expect to pay?
We know that a 30-second Super Bowl commercial ad costs around $4 million and reaches about 108
million viewers. Based on the value of a 30-second Super Bowl commercial, use the graph to consider the
cost of future 30-second World Series commercials.
3. How can you think about and estimate the number of World Series viewers each year from 2013 –
2017? How can you use the Super Bowl data to help you determine the cost of a World Series
commercial?
4. We’ve given you a table to help you calculate your trends. Complete the table on the next page. Also,
show and discuss how you arrived at these cost.
Year
Predicted Viewership
Predicted Commercial Cost
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
5. Did you/can you create a line of best fit? If so, give the equation of the line. What do the slope and yintercept represent in the context of this situation?
6. According to your model/pattern/reasoning when will viewing near zero? Do you think it will ever reach
zero?
7. You may or may not have noticed from the plot that there is a missing value in 1994. In 1994 there was
a Major League Baseball strike, so no World Series was played. If that World Series had been played,
what do you think the average viewership would have been for that series?
8. According to Forbes the cost of a 30 second World Series advertising spot on Fox in 2012 was 450,000$500,000. Commercial costs should be similar to that in 2013. How does this compare to your estimated
commercial costs? If different, reflect on why your estimate and the actual costs might not be exactly the
same.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2012/10/25/world-series-2012-the-money-behind-the-game/
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/
Brought to you by Yummymath.com