Big TV is putting it all out on the field.
A number of top TV networks and streamers are making aggressive efforts to get advertisers to pay top dollar for sports even as Madison Avenue trims back the sizable sums it has given in the past to the usual fare, like dramas, comedies and reality programming. These negotiations take place as part of the industry’s annual “upfront” market, when U.S. media companies try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory ahead of their next cycle of programs.
Sports is of paramount importance this year, according to five executives familiar with current negotiations, because advertising budgets are down noticeably from last year’s haggle and games from leagues like the NFL and the NBA are one of the few things in which marketers see growing value. “There is not as much money as media companies wanted,” says one media-buying executive, who works on behalf of advertisers to secure commercial time. Another media buyer says many clients have cut upfront budgets by at least 10%, and in some cases by as much as 30% to 40%.
“There is really only one category that is up. All the others are either flat to down,” this buyer says. “Pharma is the only one that’s up — and not as up as everybody thinks.”
If the media companies want more dollars, they may have to offer concessions. Ad buyers say they are, once again, pressing for significant “rollbacks” on rates, particularly for streaming inventory that is supposed to represent the future of the medium. The supply of streaming ad time is huge, particularly with Amazon and Netflix in the market, the executives say, and much of it is not seen as high value to advertisers because consumers watch movies and shows on demand at times of their own choosing, That means the audiences at any given time are usually quite diffuse.
That is not the case for sports, which still bring large, live audiences all watching in a single block of time. Disney went to market this year initially seeking $10 million for a 30-second ad in its coming 2027 broadcast of Super Bowl LXI, a significant jump up from the price NBC initially sought last year for its broadcast of Super Bowl LX. Disney has since agreed to some deals for lower prices, according to the executives.
Amazon and Netflix have also grown bold about asking for top sports prices, according to buyers. Both companies are “overly aggressive on their sports,” says one buying executives.
Netflix, Amazon and Disney all declined to make executives available for comment.
“Sports are the darling of everything,” says one buying executive. “Where networks have sports and scarcity in supply, those are conversations we are having first. Places where there is no sports or less urgency and scarcity in supply, those conversations are slower.” Fox Corp., which has a large sports and news portfolio, but only a smaller amount of scripted entertainment, is likely to do well, buyers indicated, while owners of traditional cable networks focused on scripted fare may have a longer negotiation ahead of them.
NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment on the status of their upfront discussions.
Sports represent one of the few areas where the TV companies and streamers have leverage. The media companies have been able to strike deals for sports that typically call for mid-to-high-single-digit percentage increases in CPMs, a measure of the cost of reaching 1,000 viewers that is central in these annual discussions between TV networks and Madison Avenue. The higher increases are for NFL games, executives say, with other sports tucking in underneath the rates set for professional football.
Meanwhile, the rate increases for other types of programming are noticeably less. Networks have been able to notch deals for broadcast TV that call for CPMs that are flat with last year’s or up as much as 5% mid-single-digit percentage. Streaming inventory is in many cases going for CPMs that are flat with last year’s or down as much as 5%, according to the executives — and in some instances, more.
Advertisers and TV sales executives may be at an impasse over cable networks focused on entertainment. These networks are viewed with less enthusiasm in the age of streaming, because more consumers are abandoning their cable subscriptions in favor of streaming services. Media buyers have pressed for rollbacks in cable, and the media companies have resisted.
Their reasoning? New data added to Nielsen earlier this year has suggested that more people are watching cable than previously expected. With that as ballast, TV companies have refused to accept cable “rollbacks,” telling media buyers they will be happy to negotiate with them again later in the year in what is known in the so-called “scatter” market, when advertisers buy ad time much closer to when it needs to run.
No matter how they haggle, the media companies are fighting over a shrinking pile of money. Dollars committed to broadcast primetime in 2025 fell 2.5% to about $9.1 billion, according to Media Dynamics, an advertising consultancy, compared with $9.34 billion in the year-earlier period. Dollars committed to cable fell 4.3% to nearly $8.68 billion, compared with nearly $9.1 billion in 2024. Meanwhile, dollars earmarked for streaming rose 17.9%, Media Dynamics said, to $13.2 billion, compared with $11.2 billion in the 2024 upfront.
The companies are counting on sports to help them eke out something they can call a victory.
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