No matter what you think about the state of the NFL, whatever you think of how Roger Goodell is perceived, whatever you think about the fallout from Deflategate, whatever you think about Colin Kaepernick or Josh Brown or James Harrison, the NFL continues to generate money in record amounts.

Per John Consoli at Broadcasting & Cable, the NFL’s four major TV networks partners have already sold more than $2.5 billion of commercial time for the upcoming 2016 season.

To put that into perspective, advertisers spent $1.2 billion on NBCUniversal’s Rio Olympics coverage last month. Further, this $2.5 billion number is despite all of that Olympics spending and with higher prices to boot.

According to Consoli, the Olympics not only hasn’t affected NFL advertising, companies that advertised in the Olympics simply went out of their way to divert money from other areas in order to make sure their NFL spending levels remained equal or surpassed previous seasons.

As if that number wasn’t gaudy and impressive enough, you also have to take into account that it includes the lost revenue by daily fantasy sport companies DraftKings and FanDuel last season. Those companies pumped roughly $150 million into game ads last year have not committed anything to the upcoming season. Not that audiences will miss them.

In perhaps the understatement of the season, Eric Johnson, executive VP of global multimedia sales for ESPN customer marketing and sales group, told B&C that “demand for NFL advertising is as strong as I’ve ever seen it.”

So who is buying up all of this advertising? Well you know the usual suspects like beer, automotive, food, and soda companies. However the boost appears to be coming chiefly because of two factors: pharmaceutical companies and Walmart. The glut of pharmaceuticals on the market mean companies need to make big splashes in order to get noticed and there’s no better way to make a splash in front of a lot of people than with the NFL. As for the nation’s biggest retailer, they’ve upped their NFL investment “significantly,” even sponsoring Fox’s NFL Kickoff pregame show. Other verticals said to be well-represented this year will be telecom/wireless, insurance, financial, and retail.

What, exactly, is everyone paying for these ads? According to B&C, NBC’s Thursday night will run you about $560,000 per unit, NBC’s Sunday Night Football ad units cost around $675,000, Sunday afternoon games averaged between $350,000 and $500,000, while late afternoon game ad units cost $600,000 – $700,000. All in all, that’s roughly a hike of 7-9 percent across the board.

So complain all you like about the NFL. You’ll keep watching and advertisers will keep paying.

[B & C]