A Super Bowl blackout of nearly 30 seconds confused fans on Sunday night and left many speculating whether NBC had lost millions in commercial revenue because of the lapse.
With an estimated 100 million fans watching the game, television screens went blank for roughly 26 seconds when NBC went to a commercial break, Market Watch reported. The network later blamed the glitch on an equipment failure.
That left many to wonder, then, exectly what was lost.
A 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl cost about $5 million, CNN reported, per NBC executives, but they didn’t respond to follow up questions about the blackout.
The time lost probably was longer than TV screens were blank because the network eventually switched to the play-by-play booth where the announcers obviously were filling time. And if NBC didn’t lose commercial time in sense of revenue, could the valuable half-minute or more have been set aside to plug its own shows?
The Verge reported that NBC's livestream app also experienced other difficulties on Sunday during the game, with several commercial breaks being replaced with a "Coverage will resume momentarily" message.
Tide ran several Super Bowl commercials – jokingly playing off the theme that any ads with clean clothes could be Tide ads – quickly jumped on the blackout, per The Verge.
Many fans took the humorous look at the brief, if not costly, blackout.
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