The Super Bowl draws in millions of viewers every year, some for the game and others for the clever commercials. Anticipated to be the most-watched television event of the year, Super Bowl LIV will include an array of political commercials aimed at the millions of Americans expected to tune in, whether they like it or not. Presidential candidates in the upcoming 2020 election and their allies are slated to spend more than $21 million on ad buys for Super Bowl Sunday programming. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg pledged to spend more than $10 million each while the rest of the field of 2020 presidential contenders is spending roughly $1 million combined.While the two billionaires’ Super Bowl ads will run nationally, other presidential candidates have booked local and regional slots for their campaign as the Kansas City Chiefs face off against the San Francisco 49ers. Super Bowl Sunday comes on the eve of a high-stakes competition in one of America’s other favorite spectator sports: the 2020 election’s first Democratic caucus in Iowa. Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), former Vice President Joe Biden and billionaire mega-donor Tom Steyer have collectively poured roughly $1 million into ads airing in Iowa just hours before they face off Monday night.Sanders’ campaign has spent more than $310,000 on ads slated to air during the Super Bowl, and on pre-game and post-game programming. Steyer’s Super Bowl ad spending has topped $270,000 while Biden’s campaign has dished out more than $160,000 for ads. Klobuchar’s spending has exceeded $117,000 and Warren has spent at least $32,000, based on political ad disclosures on file with the Federal Communications Commission the Friday before the Super Bowl.
Notably absent from the political ad filings is John Delaney (D-Md.), who was the first 2020 presidential candidate to air a political ad during the Super Bowl in 2019 but dropped out of the race in the Friday before Super Bowl LIV.The Trump campaign released a 30-second commercial titled “Stronger, Safer, More Prosperous” in a fundraising email in the week leading up to the Super Bowl. Trump is also getting a boost from his “official” pro-Trump “dark money” group, America First Policies, which is spending more than $25,000 on airtime during the Super Bowl pre-game.Bloomberg also unveiled a 60-second Super Bowl ad on Thursday dedicated to gun violence. It focuses on a Texas mother who had lost her son, an aspiring football player. Gun control has been a central issue in Bloomberg’s campaign and throughout his history in politics. The former mayor of New York was the primary funder of Everytown for Gun Safety and its predecessor, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which ran a Super Bowl ad as early as 2013. But the gun control ad isn’t Bloomberg’s only political ad on Super Sunday. Federal political ad disclosures show Bloomberg has also purchased ads mentioning Trump and featuring actor Michael Douglas. Titled “Trump Noise,” the video was released on the actor’s Facebook page in January coinciding with his endorsement of Bloomberg.While the ad featuring Douglas has not been promoted by the campaign or the actor in paid political advertising on Facebook, Bloomberg has spent on digital ads hyping his ad about gun control. Trump, too, is promoting his campaign’s Super Bowl ad in sponsored Facebook advertising.
Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.
For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: [email protected]
Support Accountability Journalism
At OpenSecrets.org we offer in-depth, money-in-politics stories in the public interest. Whether you’re reading about 2020 presidential fundraising, conflicts of interest or “dark money” influence, we produce this content with a small, but dedicated team. Every donation we receive from users like you goes directly into promoting high-quality data analysis and investigative journalism that you can trust.Please support our work and keep this resource free. Thank you.
