Nexxen is latest programmatic player to widen TV’s live sports window

“Sport is still the only content that drives viewership,” said Kevin Maloy, vp advanced TV solutions, Nexxen. “There’s intrinsic value to be part of that conversation.”

Broadcasters and streaming players have historically been reluctant to make live sports programming available to buy programmatically. Properties like the NFL, NBA or next year’s soccer World Cup represent cultural moments that gain increasingly rare, reliably large audiences. Smaller advertisers want to access those audiences, but they’re often priced out of the market.

“The smaller and mid-size advertisers have the interest, but the challenge is finding the budgets to invest in something, especially when [that] comes at such a high minimum,” said Paula Berkel, vp media at Amp Agency.

Live sports might be lucrative for media companies but they’re also enormously expensive — Amazon, NBC and Disney together spent a cool $76 billion on NBA rights last year — meaning there’s also a lot of pressure for media companies to monetize every remaining inch of television surface area to make their nut.

Programmatic buying opens the door to smaller advertisers because they can buy ad time against live sports in smaller bites — and because the finer targeting can be easier to justify to performance-minded marketers. “It provides that opportunity for these advertisers who have been interested in the impact and reach that live sports can provide, but don’t necessarily have the budget,” explained Berkel.

“By going programmatic, [smaller advertisers] are able to afford it, whereas a large-scale linear play is just something they can’t do,” said Karen Morrow, director of video investment at Sequoia Media Group.

“Programmatic is something that we’re building up the speed to match the level of interest [on],” said Kevin Connelly, senior director, programmatic sales and business development at FanDuel Sports Network. Formerly Bally Sports (which FanDuel bought and renamed last October), Connolly said the company had recorded a 40% year-on-year revenue lift through its partnership with Nexxen.

NBCU’s move in 2024 to make the Summer Olympics available to buy programmatically, previously having only sold it direct, was a watershed moment in this regard. This year, more dominoes have fallen. Hisense made its smart TV inventory (a living room favorite among sports-adjacent advertisers) available programmatically for the first time in September while Comcast made its linear inventory biddable for the first time in October.

More small advertisers are picking up on the opportunity. Ad inventory on channels like MLB Network have become popular this year among clients of specialist media-buying company Kerv, said Alexa Munoz, associate director, programmatic buying.

At Nexxen, ad requests increased by 300% and bid requests by 200% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2025. The company also logged 29% growth in linear live sports bookings in the same period according to a spokesperson, who didn’t provide dollar estimates.

“As more networks adopt programmatic and DAI [dynamic ad insertion], it unlocks more opportunities… for clients who have small budgets to test in sports,” said Harrison Hess, head of sports media investment at Tatari.

For some buyers, access alone isn’t enough for them to recommend their small advertiser clients to proceed. Danny Weisman, co-founder and chief media officer at Obsessed Media, cited transparency concerns (issues such as reselling and measurement in streaming have been sore points for buyers this year) and worried a small-budget brand would still not be able to cut through with the viewing public.

“You’re still only one ad in a sea of many others, and you’re not necessarily able to break through like you would on another media channel,” he said.