Want your game shown at Summer Game Fest? That’ll be $250K, please

Premiering a trailer during this year’s Summer Game Fest costs a quarter million dollars for 60 seconds, according to a new report.

That’s right, a one-minute-long video of your upcoming game has a price tag of $250,000, according to a report by Esquire, which quoted “multiple marketing professionals who requested anonymity” and one insider who said “these shows are really fucking expensive.”

In the wake of large-scale press events by the likes of Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and more at E3 of years past, Geoff Keighley-produced broadcasts like Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards have filled a void. But it’s a pricey one if you want your game to debut on the big stage.

If you want to tack on 30 seconds for your trailer and have a runtime of 90 seconds, that will reportedly cost $350,000, while two minutes costs $450,000, and a two and a half minute trailer or presentation will cost over a half a million dollars at $550,000, according to Esquire.

In 2023, Summer Game Fest peaked at over two million viewers, according to Statista, meaning the bulk of the gaming world is tuning in for events like it. And that’s just the live show, with many others watching premieres on VOD later.

After just a few years, Summer Game Fest has become sort of a de facto E3 replacement, while other companies put on shows of their own, such as Microsoft’s Xbox Showcase, Sony’s State of Play, Ubisoft Forward, and others. But with the potential for many games to appear in one spot, companies “are willing to pay a premium for the gaming equivalent of the Super Bowl commercial,” Esquire said.

While gaming is not quite on the level of the NFL when it comes to the pomp and circumstance of a “one night only” kind of event (a 30-second ad at this year’s Super Bowl reportedly cost $7 million), these numbers are nothing to shake your joystick at.

Summer Game Fest 2024 is set to kick off tomorrow, June 7, at 4pm CT and will run for multiple hours, featuring new trailers for existing games and debut ones for unannounced titles as well—and a whole lot of Keighley, of course.