Fox Sees Upfront Sales Boost From Sports, Tubi

Madison Avenue’s continued interest in sports and streaming video has lent a boost to Fox Corp. during a period when it has focused more intently on exactly those two things.

The owner of Fox News Channel and the Fox broadcast network expects to see increases in “upfront” ad commitments tied to both its linear TV properties and its Tubi streaming hub, according to Jeff Collins, the company’s president of advertising sales, marketing and brand partnerships.

“Our focused portfolio of market-leading properties in Sports, News, Entertainment and Streaming delivered year-over-year growth in both linear and digital advertising commitments as well as growth in overall portfolio pricing in this year’s Upfront,” the executive said in a statement. “Notably, we saw rapidly accelerating double-digit volume growth on Tubi which is testament to its incredible momentum in the Streaming marketplace.”

Fox posts its results amid one of the most complex “upfront” markets in recent memory, one in which a massive glut of streaming inventory came online thanks to the introduction of ad-supported tiers from both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The growth in supply of streaming inventory spurred several media companies to offer “rollbacks,” or lessen the rates of their ad inventory as expressed via a CPM, a measure of the cost of reaching 1,000 viewers that is seen as critical to these annual talks between TV companies and Madison Avenue.

Disney agreed to significant CPM rollbacks on inventory in Disney+, according to people familiar with the negotiations, a move that forced others to make similar moves in order to meet pricing demands from various buyers and advertisers. Fox tried to hold firm when it came to Tubi, according to a person familiar with the matter, who notes that the company “did not see pricing come down double-digits, or, quite frankly, anywhere close to that.”

Fox won more than 25 new advertisers to Tubi, this person says, and the streamer saw growth in categories including consumer packaged goods, finance and auto.

Sports also secured new interest, particularly football, which saw double-digit percentage increases in volume, this person says. Fox will broadcast 2025’s Super Bowl LIX on February 9, and has been seeking around $7 million for a 30-second ad, according to people familiar with recent negotiations.

Advertisers committed additional volume to the Fox News properties, this person says, though CPMs were flat with last year’s rates.

Fox sold more of its inventory tied to primetime entertainment programing than it did in 2023, according to this person, with advertisers still interested in the larger relative audiences that come to broadcast versus similar fare on cable.