You Could Buy 5 Tricked-Out Teslas For the Price Of One Sunday Night Football Ad

Are you thinking about advertising your business on prime-time network TV? It might be a good investment, but for the price of just a single ad on one show, you could treat yourself to a very expensive, maxed-out electric vehicle.

The folks at AdAge have put out this guide to the price of ads on the five major networks (well… four, plus the CW) and some of these figures are astoundingly high, even by advertising standards.

Sunday Night Football rules the roost, charging $627,300 for a single 30-second spot. Now, we could have put that in perspective by telling you it will buy you a really nice house or pay for a mid-level GM executive for a year, but we decided to use the Tesla Model S as our standard of measurement.

According to the Tesla website, a fully tricked-out Model S will run you $122,470 (after the federal tax credit). That means you could buy five of these deluxe driving machines and still have a bit left over before reaching $627,300. Again, that is what NBC charges for 30 seconds of commercial time during those moments which most people are in the bathroom urinating or going to the kitchen to get a beverage that will later result in urine.

And even though Thursday Night Football has historically been a ratings stinker — at least in NFL terms — its latest incarnation on CBS is hopeful that it can wrangle the second-highest fee for ads, at $483,333.

What’s that in terms of Teslas? Glad you asked.

It’s almost exactly the price of four maxed-out Tesla Model S vehicles. You might have to take off a feature or two on the last Tesla to get it in there, but still… four $120K cars for the price of an ad in a game, like tonight’s little-anticipated match-up between two 1-2 teams.

The most expensive non-football program is everyone’s favorite show about brilliant borderline sociopaths who somehow manage to spend an awful lot of time around incredibly attractive women. That’s right, The Big Bang Theory.

The CBS sitcom, which relocated this season to make room for Thursday Night Football, asks advertisers to ante up $344,827, or nearly $11,500 per second, to run ads between Sheldon’s “bazingas.”

For that price, you could get 2.8 maxed-out Model S vehicles, or two fully tricked-out cars and one with the P85 battery but not all the extras.

Other shows that cost as much as at least two tricked-out Teslas include NBC’s The Voice ($254K to $274K; or 2.1 to 2.24 Teslas), The Blacklist ($283K, or 2.31 Teslas). ABC’s Modern Family is almost in 2-Teslas territory, charging $239,650 (1.96 Teslas). Perhaps if your state has additional credits, you could get the full two for that much.

On the other end of the scale is just about everything on the CW, where the most expensive show, The Vampire Diaries, only charges $59,620, not even enough to pay the sticker price on the most basic Model S. Some shows, like Reign and Jane the Virgin only ask $23K for ads, which isn’t even in the range of the promised $35,000 Tesla Model 3 that isn’t coming out until at least 2017.