Fox Cashes In as Cubs-Indians World Series Goes Seven Games

(Bloomberg) -- 21st Century Fox Inc. is charging more than $500,000 for a 30-second ad during Wednesday night's World Series finale, according to a person familiar with the matter, a price that's about doubled since the series began.

Intense interest in the matchup between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, the two teams with the longest title droughts in baseball, have pushed Fox's ratings -- and its ad rates -- to recent highs. The $500,000 price tag is up about 20 percent over Tuesday's Game 6, when the network was charging about $400,000, according to an ad buyer who asked not to be identified discussing private information.

Game 6 -- in which the Cubs evened the series at three games each -- drew 23.4 million viewers on the Fox broadcast network and was the most-watched World Series Game 6 since 1997, when the Florida Marlins faced the Indians, according to Nielsen.

The series concludes with Game 7 in Cleveland, which is likely to be Fox's most-watched baseball game in 15 years. Through the first five games, the series was averaging an audience of almost 20 million per game, on track to be the most-watched World Series since 2004, when the Red Sox won their first title since 1918, the person said.

A $500,000 ad is expensive for baseball broadcasts, but it's not Super Bowl money. It's not even “Sunday Night Football” money. A 30-second spot on NBC's prime-time weekend game costs about $674,000 on average, making it the most expensive commercial time on television, according to Ad Age.

Fox has been selling ads for Games 5, 6 and 7 as those games have been scheduled. (Advertisers are reluctant to pay for slots in games that might not happen.) That has its advantages -- Fox can use the big audience numbers to raise prices -- and its downsides: the network's ad sales team has scrambled to get the commercial time sold, selling ads for Game 7 until the last minute possible, the person said. Fox can also use the World Series to compensate advertisers for ratings declines on its other cable networks, the ad buyer said.

The big World Series ratings are a relief to the media industry, which has seen audiences shrinking for several major live sporting events this year, including the Olympics, National Football League games and the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gerry Smith in New York at gsmith233@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Crayton Harrison at tharrison5@bloomberg.net.