Media Buying Briefing: Upfront sports is getting the job done – but it’s not helping the rest of the market move

In the end, the upfront marketplace, which has now grown to include major sports content like the NFL, NBA, March Madness college basketball and even college football, won’t wrap for several more weeks. 

“The partners that have a lot of sports and also have entertainment, they’re going to force the entertainment conversation as well. They’re using sports to their leverage,” said one holding company investment exec, who like all buyers reached for this story spoke on condition of anonymity. “For some of the networks where there is no sports, or there’s minimal amount of sports, those conversations are happening a little bit slower, which is not surprising. You start with the priority, which, in a lot of places is sports, and then you see the way the rest of the things fall out.”

A second buyer at another holding company said that the NFL is the hottest selling content in the upfront this year, followed by the NBA, which is being sold for the first time in decades by NBC Universal, as well as for the first time by Amazon. “I’ve told clients, if you want to add NFL, you’re not going to get it. It’s just not there,” said that buyer. “I paid a little more than I expected to pay, but I also saw it was a little bit of a runaway train.”

This buyer said even Netflix, which will carry two NFL games on Christmas Day this year, has been aggressive with its limited inventory. The buyer said they would hold off investing in NFL if pricing accommodations weren’t made in entertainment inventory, and the buyer said Netflix didn’t blink. That sounds very much like a seller’s market — at least when it comes to pro football.  

NBCU has rights to the 2026 Super Bowl, and has largely reached sellout — or at least paused selling what’s left to evaluate the inventory remaining. Several buyers also noted that NBCU tied sales of Super Bowl inventory to purchasing avails in the Winter Olympics in 2026, which it also is selling in this upfront. 

“There was an ask for an equal or around the same level of spending that they were getting within the game to be also made around the Winter Olympics,” said a third buyer, who said they declined the offer.

Still, the major sports events are hotter than ever. “Tentpoles have moved quicker than we’ve ever seen before,” said the third buyer.  “Whether you’re talking about World Cup or you’re talking about Super Bowl or even the Olympics, all these properties are moving faster and selling out faster than they ever had before.”

The challenge for the NBA, said the third buyer, is that the abundance of games being carried means that content almost never reaches sellout, which makes it more of a buyers’ play.  

World Cup is another tentpole whose inventory was selling aggressively even in the lead-up to the upfront marketplace. There’s been so much demand that its main sellers Fox (for English language coverage) and NBCU (Telemundo has Spanish-language rights) are no longer offering it to buyers, in order to maintain some amount of scatter inventory. “If you’re talking to Telemundo today for World Cup, you’re late to the game,” said the third buyer.

Women’s sports has retained the heat it’s developed over the last years since Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese made women’s March Madness ratings go through the roof. “The WNBA, March Madness, even the NWSL [National Women’s Soccer League] are all continuing to be in demand,” noted the third buyer. 

What’s far less in demand is the entertainment side of the upfront offerings sellers are bringing to the marketplace. A fourth holding company buyer found it interesting that for the second year, sellers are pushing prime-time inventory as some sort of premium, which this buyer found almost comical. 

And the push for flexibility means the sellers with mostly entertainment content (read, not sports) will have to offer even more flexibility to stay even with digital video alternatives. “If you think about the digital landscape, everything’s flexible — the IAB terms are, what, 14 day rolling options, right?” explained the fourth buyer. “Clients are starting to get used to that, and that’s the way of the future of how our business needs to operate. Of course, it’s unnerving to the linear sellers, those traditional partners, but that just means they’ve got to change their model too.”

Of all the major sellers — Disney, NBCU, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery — all the buyers agreed that Warner Bros. Discovery is in the least favorable position because it doesn’t have major sports of some sort to tie its entertainment offerings to, which are down in ratings for the most part anyway. The buyers did cite HBO Max (as it’s known this week and possibly from here on in) as the lone bright spot in that seller’s portfolio. 

Finally, client budgets remain a confused mixed bag at this point, even as billions of dollars are being placed into sports and high-profile content. While one buyer said clients keep changing their upfront budgets day to day, another buyer said another major CPG client is opting to limit its upfront budgets from 10 media brands to six, as a means of keeping budget aside to either return to the bottom line or spend in scatter.

Color by numbers

Economic uncertainty caused by the on-again off-again tariffs drama is already hitting the B2B market more seriously than the broader consumer landscape, according to research from Madison Logic, an account-based marketing platform. A survey of 300 marketers with Harris Poll revealed that nearly all respondents (96%) plan to change their marketing strategy due to the impact of tariffs. Other highlights: 

• Resultingly, 61% of respondents plan to create and attend more events; 
• 57% plan to invest more in AI tools for lead generation, content creation, and analytics;
• When it comes to AI, 76% cite seeing more value for B2B marketing versus B2C marketing – with (45%) strongly agreeing;
• Specifically with generative AI, 50% said they’ll use it to predict future market trends with more accuracy; half also said it will be used to  improve data management and measurement. And finally, 49% will use it to make more personalized, targeted video content. 

Takeoff & landing

• Independent Meet the People purchased Yeoman Technology Group to enhance its retail media expertise. Terms were not disclosed. 
• Havas acquired Canadian CRM and digital transformation specialists Enverta Digital, which expands the holdco’s customer experience chops. Terms were not disclosed.  
• Account moves: OMD landed Under Armour’s media business for APAC … IPG’s Initiative is reported to have landed media duties for oral care brands Sensodent in India … Monks consolidated T-Mobile’s social business to become the brand’s social media AOR.

Direct quote

“Even though all the talk is about the media side, I think the action and the stories are going to be around the creative side of the business. Because they will undoubtedly merge a lot of the creative brands, which will create a ton of conflicts and just a ton of uncertainty for clients.”

— Steve Boehler, founder of consultancy Mercer Island Group, talking about the endgame of Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG. 

Speed reading

• Sam Bradley covered WPP Media’s launch into presenting itself as an AI-driven company with the rollout of Open Intelligence, which it’s described as a “large marketing model.”
• I covered the unexpected switch by Paramount of its media account, dropping WPP Media for Publicis, as well as Horizon Media for IPG. 
• Bradley also weighed the positives and downsides of agencies playing up transparency as a strong suit.