Disney Closes 2025 Upfront With Nearly $4 Billion in Sports Advertising
Disney has closed its 2025-2026 Upfront negotiations, with increased sales in sports and streaming and overall volume consistent with the prior year.
Streaming accounted for over 40% of total upfront volume, consistent with the prior year, while sports ad volume across linear and addressable hit nearly $4 billion.
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Sports highlights included 69 multi-year deals, double-digit volume growth for 'Monday Night Football' and college football and a double-digit percentage increase in volume for women's sports such as the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament, WNBA, and emerging engagement around sports, like softball and volleyball. The NBA also saw high single-digit volume growth, driven by the NBA Finals and 'Inside the NBA.'
Elsewhere, the company saw strong demand for live events, with early bookings for the Oscars, CMA Awards, and 'Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest.' The Oscars nearly doubled the number of units sold as part of the Upfront compared to last year.
Disney Advertising continued to expand its base of independent agencies, which saw double-digit volume growth across sports and streaming. Categories that led the growth included financial services, consumer packaged goods, pharma and beverages.
'As the velocity of change in the advertising landscape continues to accelerate, this Upfront demonstrates the enduring power of storytelling, premium environments, and that the value of trusted relationships matter to marketers,' Disney global advertising president Rita Ferro said in a statement. 'Our strength in streaming and live events delivers results at scale, and we're shaping what's next for the entire industry.'
Disney is the latest to close its upfront negotiations with growth and sports and streaming.
Fox notably exceeded $2 billion in upfront revenue on core properties, excluding the World Cup, representing double-digit growth year-over-year. It also saw Tubi's volume of upfront ad dollars committed grow by 35% year-over-year.
NBCUniversal saw a 15% increase in commitments across its broadcast offerings, including news, sports and entertainment, and touted its largest digital upfront and strongest sports upfront in history, though it offered no hard numbers.
Peacock saw an over 20% year-over-year increase, representing nearly a third of the media giant's total upfront commitments. The company's new 11-year media rights deal with NBA contributed to a 20% increase in new clients compared to the 2024-2025 season and a 45% year-over-year increase in volume. Over 25% of NBCUniversal's NBA advertisers will be new to broadcast this year. Bravo represented nearly 20% of the company's entire entertainment demand across broadcast and cable and Versant saw a nearly 10% increase in clients investing in its brands.
Meanwhile, Netflix executives told analysts during the company's second quarter earnings call that the 'vast majority' of its upfront deals with the major agencies have been completed.
'Those results have generally been in line or slightly better than our targets, and consistent with our goal to roughly double the ads business this year,' Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said.
The post Disney Closes 2025 Upfront With Nearly $4 Billion in Sports Advertising appeared first on TheWrap.
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