Now that broadcast TV’s scripted development has more or less gone the way of the barefoot placekicker—whereas the pre-pandemic 2019-20 upfront was prefaced by 59 pilot orders, this year’s field of sample episodes never got out of the single digits—the focus during the annual presentations to advertisers will be squarely on live sports. As the networks’ stock of sitcoms, procedurals and medical dramas continues to dwindle, the stuff that really moves the marketing needle has taken over top billing—and an even greater share of ad spending.
The sports-first dynamic will be immediately apparent as NBCUniversal gets Upfronts Week underway with its Monday morning show at Radio City. Sports is expected to account for nearly half of NBCU’s upfront dollars this year, as the company kicks off the spring bazaar with a slate that includes Super Bowl LX, the 2026 Winter Olympics and the NBA playoffs.
NBC’s sales team has already begun selling inventory in and around those events, and while recent spasms of economic volatility may disrupt long-term media planning, these marketplace upheavals haven’t had much of an impact on the demand for sports.
“[While] advertising is the category that has shown the most economic related cyclicality in our business historically … for the upfront and for the balance of the year, we feel well positioned in the market as we capitalize on the NBA launching in the fourth quarter,” Comcast chief financial officer Jason Armstrong noted last month during the company’s first quarter earnings call. Armstong went on to say that the NBA “is going to be a key anchor of what we look to do around the upfronts,” and with 50 additional regular-season games coming to broadcast next season, advertisers are already clamoring for a piece of the league’s enhanced inventory.
If NBC threatens to suck all the air out of the room next winter—in an unprecedented 17-day sprint, the network will air the Super Bowl, the Milano Cortino Olympics and the NBA All-Star Game—its rivals won’t exactly be sidelined during the other 348 days of the year. Enhanced by blockbuster ratings and relative scarcity (60% of in-game sponsorships are structured around multiyear deals), demand for the NFL and college football has never been stronger, although buyers may look to push back on the usual price hikes. In last year’s upfront, the average cost of a single unit in NBC’s Sunday Night Football soared 14% to $1 million a pop, and the only pricing break to be found was at Amazon Prime, which dialed down its Thursday night rates by 4%.
If the ongoing expansion of the NFL’s national inventory should keep CPM hikes in check during the upfront selloff, the league’s media partners may counter by holding back more units for scatter. Nine years out of 10, the scatter market moves at a premium to the upfront, and while economic uncertainty makes it difficult to predict how the advertising landscape will look by year’s end, the networks remain cautiously optimistic about their prospects.
“Right now the advertising market is quite healthy for us,” Disney chief financial officer Hugh Johnston said during last week’s earnings call. “Live sports, as you know, is doing extremely well, and you see that in the ESPN numbers, where advertising for the quarter was up 20%.” Johnston went on to say that Disney’s platforms were seeing “robust demand” on the eve of the upfront, despite “concern from a consumer perspective and what that might mean for advertisers.” Fast-food and healthcare spend has been particularly strong in second-quarter scatter, although Johnston acknowledged that investment across the direct-to-consumer space has been disrupted by a glut in supply.
Speaking of which, Amazon disrupted the 2024-25 upfront when it flooded the market with nearly $2 billion in Prime inventory that simply did not exist the year before. While the torrent of additional units mostly impacted sales on the general-entertainment front, Amazon’s sports portfolio has grown to include the NBA and NASCAR, which will come online alongside its NFL and WNBA holdings.
Speaking of the WNBA, while the hockey-stick growth of the league in the Caitlin Clark era has translated to a reciprocal spike in demand for in-game units, some buyers have suggested that women’s sports could be the first casualty of a recession. As much as hoops inventory is selling like the proverbial hotcakes across the college and pro ranks, other women’s sports have yet to inspire a similarly outsized show of support from advertisers. Buyers warn that brands which have only recently dipped a toe into this particular end of the marketing pool may deprioritize their less-established investments if the economy takes a turn for the worse, although there’s been no sign of any pullback thus far.
One surefire economic indicator suggests that the sports market is poised to weather a future downturn, as CBS’s parent company reported that the Q2 scatter market is “up double digits.” As a strong scatter market nearly always presages a robust upfront bazaar, Paramount co-CEO Chris McCarthy noted during last week’s earnings Q&A. “That’s always been a really interesting early indicator for us, so we’re feeling good,” McCarthy told analysts, although a colleague would go on to sound a note of caution.
“The macro environment is uniquely dynamic right now and that does create some uncertainty,” Paramount chief financial officer Navin Chopra said. “That has the potential to impact revenue, primarily in advertising.”
If the uncertainty around the evolving tariff situation has rocked financial markets—last month the S&P 500 lost nearly $6 billion trillion in a four-day span, as the White House rolled out a sweeping new round of duties on imports—the demand for live sports inventory hasn’t wavered. Deals continue to get hammered out well before advertisers’ entertainment budgets have been settled, and some buyers have indicated that their clients are looking to expand their collegiate spend as NIL has given rise to scores of newly minted marketing superstars.
There may be a whole lot of Rumsfeldian “known unknowns” in play here in the U.S., but for at least the next few quarters, the sports market is expected to thrive. As Paramount’s McCarthy said last week, “In terms of how things are looking in the upfront, listen: We feel really good about the discussions and conversations we’ve been having.”
Advertisers reserved $18.4 billion in upfront commitments last spring, down 4% versus the previous sell-off. Streaming pre-orders came in at $11.1 billion, up 35% compared to the 2023-24 bazaar.
NBCU kicks off Upfronts week Monday morning at 10:30 a.m. ET, and will be followed in short order by the Fox and Amazon presentations. Disney steps up to the plate Tuesday afternoon at the Javits Center, while Warner Bros. Discovery will hold court the following morning at its usual digs inside the Theatre at Madison Square Garden. Netflix and YouTube close out the week’s run of shows later that same day.
