Super Bowl LIV may begin with a moment of silence.
Planters released its first commercial for the NFL’s championship game on Wednesday, which features the food company’s long-standing mascot, Mr. Peanut, make a heroic sacrifice to save Matt Walsh and Wesley Snipes.
We won’t spoil the heartbreaking details, so you’ll just have to watch what happens in the video above. Mr. Peanut was 104.
The Super Bowl, of course, is the most-watched TV event of the year. That makes it the most-expensive ad buy for marketers, so they need to pull stunts like this to get viewers excited. For this year’s Super Bowl, the highest price for a 30-second spot is $5.6 million, an increase over the $5.3 million peak for Super Bowl LIII. Fox has already sold all of its Super Bowl inventory.
Over the previous decade, the Super Bowl accounted for $3.66 billion in advertising revenue, according to data from research firm Kantar Media. In that same time, the average cost for a 30-second spot grew 63%, from $2.77 million in 2010 to $4.51 million in 2019 (it peaked in 2017 at $4.7 million).
Last year’s Super Bowl LIII brought in $412 million in ad revenue for CBS, which was up just a hair over the $411 million that NBC earned for Super Bowl LII in 2018. It dwarfs all other major TV staples in ad cost: The next-most expensive properties in 2019 were the Academy Awards, at $1.95 million, and the AFC Championship Game, at $1.92 million.
The Super Bowl will be held Feb. 2 from Hard Rock Stadium in South Florida, airing on Fox. The San Francisco 49ers will take on the Kansas City Chiefs.