Media Buying Briefing: In this year’s upfront, sports is playing offense, defense and referee

That reality is most likely going to touch off an early start to dealmaking, if it hasn’t already begun. (Whispers in the marketplace are that IPG has already begun cutting deals — but IPG execs didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

“Sports is going to be through the roof,” said the head of investment at a holding company, who declined to speak on the record. “And maybe it’s not sports — it’s the NFL. I have never seen as aggressive an NFL volume marketplace as this.” 

The head of investment went on to explain that even pharmaceutical advertising is looking to buy into the NFL since other linear gross ratings points are shrinking each year as ratings drop for entertainment content and cable churn eats at the entire audience pool. “It’s quality content, good ratings, safe environment,” they added. “It doesn’t matter who within your organization it is, they all know the NFL.”

To a lesser degree, the NBA, women’s sports — and a broader desire to attract brands to live content, all bastions of delivering ratings — could set off an earlier and more aggressive start to the buying bonanza of the upfront.

“Sports is going to be the, probably their [the networks’ and streamers’] biggest leveraging point,” said Alicia Weaver, vp of media direct activation at independent Mediassociates. “They all led pretty strong with the sports angle.”

All six media agency execs Digiday spoke with for this story agreed that the media firms offering sports are attaching lesser-value inventory to investing in the best sports content out there. In other words, if you want to secure inventory in NBC’s NFL playoffs coverage in 2026, you’re going to need to buy X amount of USA and Bravo content, for example.

With all the presentations done and confetti swept up, the time for negotiations begins now — and it’s possible some business may get done sooner than later. Even though conventional wisdom says it’s going to be a slow market due to economic uncertainty combined with more complex negotiations than ever. But no one is expecting a quick resolution because the more than $20 billion in marketer dollars passing through media agency hands is going to move slowly for those publishers and media companies that don’t offer flexibility in pricing and in cancellation options in exchange for long-term upfront commitments. 

Streamers go for broke on dollar volume

The growing presence and importance of the major streamers also has the potential to pull some dollars away from the traditional sellers — despite the latter offering their own streaming options. Netflix, YouTube and Amazon are said by more than one buyer Digiday spoke with to be asking for massive dollar volume increases, up to three or four times what the buyers spent in last year’s upfront. 

In the case of YouTube and Amazon, they may get what they’re looking for, said one investment exec at another holding company who also spoke on condition of anonymity, because the pitch by those streamers is more than just video ad inventory.

“The advantage that YouTube and Amazon have is that they’re not a singular channel,” explained the buyer. “When we think about our YouTube budgets, we can think about what we do with YouTube Select or TrueView or DV360. We’re looking at the spend in totality … and that will help you across your entire deal. It’s the same with Amazon — it’s not just Prime, it’s a whole retail platform, it’s now a DSP that they’ve been very aggressive in the marketplace selling. That’s the advantage they have that they’re asking for significant growth but it’s not all just for their video product.”

“The world is shifting in front of our eyes, obviously between streaming and the acceleration of the new platforms — the incumbents versus the challengers,” said Paul Woolmington, CEO of Canvas. “I call it the two sides of the coin of the upfront.”

Flexibility remains another key to success for buyers to engage with upfront sellers. Jesse Schwartzfarb, Dentsu’s evp and head of video investment, noted there continues to be a “slow but steady migration from more traditional to less traditional forms of media, video in particular … Media partners who are able to provide the most flexibility in all of their video channels and whatever they’re selling in the upfront will benefit, because we want to make sure that if our clients have to make decisions or changes, they have the ability to do so without penalty.”

The rest of the upfront marketplace probably won’t move as fast, once the premium sports and entertainment content is bought up. Woolmington believes that “generally, we’re talking about a buyer’s market. We’re talking about uncertainty still. I don’t think you know even the news [of delayed tariffs between the U.S. and China] is necessarily going to immediately change client and or consumer sentiment.”

An area that didn’t come up much at all in last week’s upfront discussions: measurement besides the occasional nod to data. “There wasn’t that much of a focus on currency and measurement where in previous years a lot of those conversations were a major part” of the media companies’ presentations, said Janet Rose Budinich, director of media activation at Mediassociates.

Canvas’ Woolmington actually had his ear out for any mention of measurement and currency and he tipped his hat to Disney head of sales Rita Ferro for bringing it up. “We should have one standard measurement for AVOD,” he said. “It was one of the few times we talked about a substantive issue.”

One agency exec did, however take issue with Disney upfront closer Jimmy Kimmel’s comment to buyers that AI won’t take their jobs because “no computer wants to do what you do” since their jobs are “shitty.”

“Jimmy, thank you for letting me know I’m keeping my shitty job. I wouldn’t swap it for yours any day,” quipped the exec. “Maybe next year Disney can have an AI version of you roasting us instead of you.”

Color by numbers

Gartner last week released findings from its 2025 CMO Spend Survey of 402 CMOs, which revealed that marketing budgets continue to sit at 7.7% of overall company revenue. Other findings in the survey:

• 39% of CMOs plan to cut back on agency spend;
• Paid media continues to dominate marketing spend, accounting for 30.6% of marketing budgets;
• The proportion of budgets allocated to martech (22.4%), labor (21.9%) and agency spend (20.7%) continues to fall year-on-year.

Takeoff & landing

• IPG’s UM won media AOR duties for the 7-Eleven convenience chain (which includes Speedway stores and a delivery app), handling media strategy and digital media activation.
• Agency group Dawn is partnering with Brand Innovators to launch Brand Masters, a curriculum of modern marketing techniques for senior brand marketers, taught by a variety of marketing experts.
• The IAB and MRC released a draft of their “Attention Measurement Guidelines” seeking public comment, in a bid to create a unified framework for measuring and reporting attention across media. Comment is open until July 12.
• Personnel changes: Stagwell tapped OMD China CEO Connie Chan to be its new chief growth officer for Asia Pacific. Also, Stagwell’s Gale agency promoted longtime exec Sanjeev Gosain to be its new COO … Marketing data platform Adverity hired Lee McCance to be chief product officer, coming over from GroupM’s Choreograph, where he was president of reporting and analytics. 

Direct quote

“This is no longer just about testing or proving concepts. Addressable works. It performs. And in a media landscape that’s growing more fragmented by the day, it’s becoming the connective tissue that helps advertisers reach the audiences that matter — without waste, without overlap, and with precision.” 

— Matt Van Houten, svp of product, sales operations & business development at DirecTV, about the rise of addressable advertising

Speed reading

• In his latest Future of TV briefing, Tim Peterson offered his take on the upfront season from a content POV. 
• Seb Joseph looked into how creators made their presence felt at a number of upfront presentations, from Tubi to Amazon. 
• And Digiday Research’s Li Lu commissioned original research analyzing how tariffs could impact consumer and advertiser spending.