Price of Super Bowl ads is on 'eerily similar trajectory' to profits per partner at Kirkland
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The price of a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl in 1985 was $525,000. The cost wasn’t that far off from the average profits per partner at Kirkland & Ellis, which amounted to $405,000, according to figures by the American Lawyer. It was the first year that the publication reported on profits per partner.
Since then, profits per partner at Kirkland and the cost of a Super Bowl ad have “reached eye-watering heights on an eerily similar trajectory,” Bloomberg Law reports in a column by Roy Strom.
This Sunday, a Super Bowl 30-second ad will cost $7 million, according to Bloomberg Law, citing information from Ad Age and USA Today’s Ad Meter.
“That’s the same threshold Kirkland’s profits-per-equity-partner figure most recently crossed,” the article reports.
The article made it point with a graph that tracks Super Bowl ad costs and Kirkland’s profits per partner. They clearly are are rising in tandem.
Profits per partner at Kirkland were $7.4 million in 2021, according to the latest figures, which were released in 2022. When its 2022 profits per partner are released, they should be compared with the price of a Super Bowl ad last year, which stood at $6.5 million.
Strom wrote that it’s a good bet that Kirkland will exceed that figure, even if there is a decrease in profits per partner.
Those who agree should “consider riding with the Eagles,” Strom wrote.
That’s because of another coincidence.
Kirkland’s profits per partner exceeded the cost of a Super Bowl ad four times since 1985. Those years are 2007, 2010, 2020 and 2021. In three of those four years, a “legendary quarterback won his first Super Bowl”—Peyton Manning in 2007, Drew Brees in 2010 and Patrick Mahomes in 2020, according to the article. (In 2021, Tom Brady won a Super Bowl for his last time.)
“If the prevailing trends continue, the Eagles may have a future Hall of Famer on their hands,” Strom wrote.
