Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg probably has no shot at winning the Democratic Party presidential nomination, but he still plans to drop a whopping $10 million on a 60-second Super Bowl campaign ad to compete with a similar ad from President Donald Trump.
“It’s the battle of the billionaires,” reported NBC News this week. “The campaigns of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Donald Trump each plan to spend $10 million for advertisements during the telecast of next month’s Super Bowl.”
Airing this year on February 2, over 100 million people are expected to watch the Super Bowl, granting Bloomberg and Trump the largest possible television audience for a campaign ad. The Bloomberg team opted to go for a 60-second spot in order to out-compete the Trump team’s rumored 30-second slot.
“Mike is taking the fight to Trump,” a spokesperson for Bloomberg told NBC News.
However, upon hearing of Bloomberg’s plan, the Trump campaign then opted to double down for a 60-second spot, which means that Super Bowl Sunday may prove to yield the most amount of money spent on political campaign ads in a single day.
“We moved early and got prime ad position early in the game,” said a spokesperson with the Trump team.
“The president’s decision to stay aggressive and keep the campaign open after his first election gave us a huge head start on his re-election,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said. “The president has built an awesome, high-performance, omnichannel machine, and it’s time to give it some gas.”
So, will Bloomberg’s gamble pay off? Possibly. According to Fox News, the former New York mayor has been steadily rising in the polls as he ups his campaign staff. A solid ad during the Super Bowl might be what pushes him over the edge to become a serious Democratic Party presidential primary contender.
Six weeks after he announced his candidacy for president, the former New York City mayor and multibillionaire business and media mogul has assembled a campaign juggernaut that now numbers 800 staffers.
Bloomberg’s also spent an eye-watering $166 million to run TV commercials on behalf of his 2020 White House bid — according to the ad tracking firm Advertising Analytics. That includes $36 million just to air ads the first week of the new year.
And he’s seen his national poll numbers edge up since jumping in. The candidate stands at 5.6 percent support in the latest RealClearPolitics average of the most recent public opinion surveys — up from 4 percent a month ago. This puts him in fifth position, just behind the top tier of Democratic nomination candidates.
Bloomberg’s team confirmed to Fox News that they now have 300 staffers at the national campaign headquarters in New York City, as well as 500 in 30 states across the country — including 14 states that vote on Super Tuesday. The March 3 contests mark the largest single day of voting this primary cycle and are key to Bloomberg’s strategy as he largely bypasses the first four states on the calendar.
So far, Michael Bloomberg has received just one celebrity endorsement: TV’s Judge Judy, who believes that he could be the man to unite the country. Pop singer Katy Perry has also reportedly been in discussions on whether or not to publicly endorse him.
