Toronto Blue Jays fans cheer after the game against the Los Angeles Dodgers during Game 5 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium.Kiyoshi Mio/Reuters
By the time the Toronto Blue Jays’ first World Series game wrapped up last Friday night, Sarah Thompson’s six-year-old daughter Esme was already sick of the commercials.
“She said, This is the fourth time I’ve seen this ad. I hate advertising.” This was awkward, since Thompson, who is the executive managing director of the media agency Glassroom, makes her living in advertising, but she was certainly sympathetic. “You know: ‘Out of the mouths of babes.’”
Over the past month, even as millions jumping aboard the Blue Jays bandwagon have thrilled to the excitement of October baseball, they’ve experienced the numbing exasperation of watching what feels like the same five or six spots every time the game cuts to commercial.
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Talk to anyone watching the Jays, and they’ll have an ad, or maybe five, that has become as annoying as a dentist drill.
The issue is a particular problem in Canada, where there are relatively few companies with deep enough pockets to buy in to blockbuster live events compared with the U.S., with which we share so much sports programming. And as the costs for live sports rights continue to rise – and are then passed along to companies buying ads, as well as fans through higher subscription fees – the problem will likely get worse.
“These kinds of moments are what advertisers dream of. This is the moment when you get the most amount of reach, you get the most amount of eyeballs, you get the most amount of opportunity,” said Thompson. But marketers in Canada too often don’t spend money to create more than one ad for a campaign, especially if they’re draining their advertising budget simply to buy airtime.
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“You can quickly go from, ‘This is fresh,’ to ‘This is fatiguing.’”
It’s not a new complaint – hockey fans are used to seeing the same small clutch of ads for trucks or Tim Hortons during the two-month stretch of the Stanley Cup playoffs each spring.
But the effect is more concentrated during the baseball playoffs, because the games are more frequent – Friday’s game will be the 17th one for the Jays in 28 days – there are more breaks in play, and pitching changes and extra innings can send the ad count skyrocketing.
And, this year, far more Canadians are tuning in.
On Thursday, citing data from the ratings agency Numeris, Sportsnet announced that Game 5 on Wednesday night pulled in an average of 7.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched Blue Jays games on record. About 19.3 million – or almost half of the population of Canada – have caught some of the series.
Audiences that large cost a lot of money to reach, limiting the pool of marketers who can afford to buy in. Richard Ivey, the executive vice-president of business solutions for the Horizon Media agency, said he had seen 30-second spots priced $50,000 to $90,000 in the ALDS and ALCS, with spots in the World Series now fetching in the range of $150,000, and perhaps $200,000 for 30 seconds of airtime in a potential Game 7.
“If you’re watching a baseball game, there’s the same number of 30-second spots that are available in Canada as in the States,” noted Ivey, but there are far more companies that can play in that rarified air south of the border, even if the airtime is more expensive there. “So, you don’t end up with the same level of frequency in the U.S., because there’s just more advertisers.”
And the unpredictability of sports means that no one in Canada was putting aside millions of dollars, when ad budgets were drawn up six or 12 months ago, to invest in a possible Jays playoff run during the most important quarter of the year for many businesses.
Here’s some of what viewers of Rogers’ CityTV channel saw on Tuesday night between the anthem prior to Game 4 and the last pitch 3:15 hours later: six airings of a Coinbase ad (including three within a span of less than 20 minutes), five airings each of spots for Winners, Canadian Tire, McDonald’s Monopoly game, Ford’s F-150 truck, Subway, McCain fries, and Pizza Pizza, and two airings of a WestJet ad within 10 minutes. There were four spots starring Seth Rogen for the food delivery service Skip and three with Will Arnett mocking fintech startups on behalf of RBC.
On Tuesday night between the anthem prior to Game 4 and the last pitch a few hours later, viewers of Rogers’ CityTV channel saw three spots with Will Arnett mocking fintech startups on behalf of RBC.Cindy Ord/Getty Images
All of which would have been seen dozens of times already by anyone watching the Jays over the past month.
Viewers also saw an ad touting the province of Ontario’s controversial Ring of Fire development air seven times: three in a 60-second version, and four in a 30-second cut, for a total of five minutes of airtime. That exceeded any other marketer except Rogers Communications, which owns the Blue Jays as well as Sportsnet and CityTV and is sponsoring the postseason coverage.
Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson for the Office of the Premier, said the high frequency of the Ring of Fire spot was necessary, “to reach as many people as possible, as they tune into the World Series, and see Ontario’s economic potential that will last for generations to come.”
Both Ivey and Thompson counsel clients to keep in mind the risk of viewer burnout from too much repetition, and to make fresh creative that will keep them interested.
“We’re not thinking about the viewer experience of our advertising,” said Thompson. “We’re buying because we can, and because it has reach and frequency. But we’re not thinking about, ‘Wow, this is a great opportunity to tell a different story, or a different view of my brand.’”