Quicken Loans may be the “official mortgage sponsor” of the NFL and the face of the Rocket Mortgage Super Bowl Squares Sweepstakes, but one of its biggest lending rivals is dialing up its own big play on Super Bowl Sunday.
United Wholesale Mortgage, which is now one of the largest lenders in the country, will air its first Super Bowl commercial during this year’s matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers.
The commercial is the lender’s first Super Bowl ad and the ad itself is a direct shot across Quicken Loans’ bow.
The ad, which can be seen below, opens with a swipe about how playing with rockets is fun when you’re a kid, but not so much when you’re an adult.
The ad highlights the “FindAMortgageBroker.com” website, which is powered by UWM and helps borrowers find a mortgage broker in their area.
The ad claims that by using a mortgage broker, who work with various lenders instead of just one, borrowers can get a “faster, easier, more affordable” mortgage than the one they’d get using Quicken Loans’ Rocket Mortgage or other lenders.
UWM and Quicken Loans are no strangers to competing against each other. Both are among the top lenders in the country, but UWM only does wholesale, while Quicken Loans does retail (mainly through Rocket at this point) as well as wholesale, through Quicken Loans Mortgage Services.
In fact, one might even say that the companies are rivals, as seen a couple of years ago when each company accused the other of underhanded dealings in the competition for borrowers.
But by advertising during the Super Bowl, UWM is following a path originally laid out by Quicken Loans, which rolled out its first Super Bowl commercial four years ago.
The commercial unveiled Rocket Mortgage and its tagline “Push Button. Get Mortgage” to the nation as a whole, but that tagline led to some serious confusion and angst among the public at large.
But Quicken Loans wasn’t the only lender to make a big push during the Super Bowl that day. SoFi also advertised during Super Bowl 50, spending 20% of its ad budget on its Super Bowl commercial.
SoFi was back the next year, although it took a different approach, choosing to buy one of the ad spots that would run only if the game went into overtime. That year’s game actually did go into overtime, leading to a big win for SoFi.
Quicken Loans returned to the Super Bowl advertising game a couple of years later, hiring actor Keegan-Michael Key to appear in its ad, which was much more well-received than its first go-round.
Super Bowl viewers will apparently see another Quicken Loans commercial this year, as the lender has recently been teasing an appearance from Game of Thrones and Aquaman star Jason Momoa in its ad.
Quicken Loans’ commercial will be a national spot, likely costing the lender somewhere between $5 million and $5.6 million if the ad is 30 seconds. If it’s longer, the price goes up, of course. And that doesn’t factor in how much it cost to produce the ad itself.
UWM, on the other hand, is taking a more targeted approach. The company’s ad will be available in “select markets,” the company told HousingWire.
The company did not indicate which markets those would be, but the move to advertise on what will be the most-watched TV program of the year in every market is still a big play for the already sizable lender.
As for a little more on why UWM is running the Super Bowl commercial this year, UWM CEO Mat Ishbia provided HousingWire with an exclusive video discussing the company’s reasoning.
In the video, Ishbia says that the ad is not about UWM. Rather, Ishbia said it’s about supporting mortgage brokers.
Check out that video below.
