NBCU Says Surge in Sports Ads Boosts Upfront Sales Haul

Yahoo

15-07-2025

People still want to watch sports on TV, and that means — at least for now — advertisers still need to spend on it.
NBCUniversal said Tuesday that its new 11-year deal for NBA rights resulted in a 15% increase in 'upfront' ad commitments across its core broadcast offerings of news, sports and entertainment, with a quarter of its NBA sponsors new to traditional linear TV. The Comcast-backed media conglomerate also said it saw 'record sales commitments overall,' and 'delivered its largest digital Upfront in history,' though it offered no estimates on the amount of volume it secured. The value of its commitments across its media holdings is expected to be in excess of $7 billion — a total NBCU last made public in 2022.
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In the 'upfront,' U.S. media companies vie to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory for their next cycle of programming, and there has been concern that tariff negotiations by the Trump White House might dampen Madison Avenue's appetite to spend on TV. Traditional TV companies are also contending with the rise of digital giants such as YouTube, Netflix and Amazon's Prime Video, along with other one-time upstarts.
NBCU moved early this year to win ad support for a massive cache of sports inventory tied to 2026 telecasts of the Milan Cortina Olympics, Super Bowl LX and the FIFA World Cup. NBC was asking for $7 million for a 30-second spot in the Super Bowl, according to people familiar with the sales process, and is likely sold out of much of its inventory tied to the gridiron classic.
Many of the company's properties benefitted from the company's sports-heavy offering. NBCU said its Peacock streaming service saw a 20% increase in volume, and now represents 'nearly 1/3 of NBCUniversal's total Upfront commitments.' The Telemundo Spanish-language network also saw new levels of volume, NBCU said, with ad revenue committed to next year's Spanish-language World Cup telecast already exceeding the revenue for the previous World Cup with over 10 months until kickoff.'
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'The response has been extraordinary, and we are incredibly grateful for our partners' trust and collaboration,' said Mark Marshall, chairman of NBCU's ad-sales and partnerships operations, in a prepared statement. 'With a cross-platform strategy supercharged by cutting-edge technology, we're proud to engage 286 million people monthly — setting a new standard and delivering the most successful Upfront in our company's history.'
Sports has been key to the ad-sales game so far this year. There is no other programming format that continues to dependably generate the large, simultaneous viewing audiences that advertisers and distributors crave. NBCU was likely able to use demand for its sports properties to generate sales and deals tied to other kinds of programming.
The upfront sports marketplace has been particularly 'aggressive,' says one media buyer familiar with recent negotiations, with ad slots in many top events scheduled for the fourth quarter largely out of sale at many of the TV companies. This executive says demand was particularly intense for NFL inventory, with NBA interest heightened for digital games. The move from Warner to NBC, says this buyer, offers some complications, as advertisers may want to consider whether the new slates of games on broadcast will capture the bigger potential audience that tunes into the medium. This buyer suggested that most networks with NBA rights will likely have more inventory to sell, while media companies with NFL events — including Amazon's 'Black Friday' game stream or Netflix's Christmas game — probably have less time on their hands.
Indeed, the company revealed Tuesday that advertisers even contributed more money to the cable networks tied to Versant, the portion of NBCU that is expected to be spun off into a separate, publicly traded entity by Comcast later in 2025. The portfolio of networks tied to the new company, which include MSNBC, CNBC and USA, saw a nearly 10% increase 'in clients investing in its brands,' NBCU said. In recent years, media companies have used cable properties, increasingly falling out of favor in the streaming era as more viewers stream dramas and comedies at times of their own choosing, as 'sweeteners' in negotiations, giving favorable deals in order to secure better rates for sports and broadcast events.
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Whether NBCU's performance is indicative of the industry as a whole remains to be seen. A good chunk of its new upfront wealth — NBCU said it saw a 45% increase in ad commitments tied to sports programming — may simply be the result of a transfer of dollars once earmarked for Warner Bros. Discovery's NBA schedule, which aired for years on TNT. Some portion of that money may also be coming from rivals that are more heavily dependent on cable.
NBCU disclosed that more of its advertising base is tied to new types of sales. The company said it saw an uptick in deals from small- and medium-sized advertisers that have typically not struck deals with media companies heavily reliant on national TV media. In the streaming era, these same companies can sell digital inventory that shows up in specific geographic regions or alongside viewers with specific interests or buying traits. Indeed, NBCU said nearly 60% of ad investments are being made against so-called 'advanced audiences.' The company said its programmatic business — ads that rely on algorithms to snatch up specific kinds of inventory tied to the type of viewers an advertiser seeks — came to $1 billion.
Top categories included retail, restaurants, auto, travel and financial services, NBCU said, each of which increased ad commitments by about 12%. Movie and TV studios also played a significant role in the sales process.
Executives on both sides of the table say media companies have been able to win increases in certain kinds of CPMs, a measure of how much it costs for an ad to reach 1,000 viewers — a metric that is central in these discussions between media companies and advertisers. Sports ads were generating what has been estimated to be CPMs in the high-single-digit percentage range, while CPM increase were projected to be the low-single-digit percentage range for commercials tied to traditional linear broadcast. Some of the uptick in linear CPMs isn't driven by a robust market, but by the fact that the networks have less traditional entertainment to sell and smaller audiences projected to watch what remains.
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There have been some expectations that many of the media companies would agree to 'rollbacks' in digital CPMs, owing to the introduction of massive amounts of streaming inventory from Amazon and Netflix, among other venues.
TV networks favor the upfront market because it allows them to build support for their programs well ahead of their debut. Still, the advertising bazaar has been tougher to navigate in recent years as more people gravitate to streaming video and other means of accessing their favorite programs, movies, news and sports events.
Ad commitments for the most recent cycle of primetime broadcast TV fell 3.5% in 2024's upfront market, to $9.34 billion, according to Media Dynamics Inc., while commitments for primetime on cable tumbled 4.8%, to $9.065 billion. Meanwhile, ad commitments to streaming video hubs rose a noticeable 35.3%, hiking to $11.1 billion from $8.2 billion in the previous market. The amount committed to streaming video for the most recent TV season was greater than that devoted to primetime broadcast or primetime cable — a first for the industry.
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