At Upfronts this week, separate presentations by media companies Disney, Fox and NBCUniversal each touched on two key factors for ad buyers: Sports and fandoms – albeit with different flavors.
As the annual TV ad sales negotiation season culminated, each presentation had a respective parade of athletes, celebrities and TV personalities helping to pitch and show off the companies’ upcoming programming slates and ad solutions.
But in a world of finite attention and fragmented media bubbles, these three major players all emphasized two important factors to brands and buyers in their own ways: The reach-generating and staying power of live sports; and the habitual engagement, loyalty and cultural factor of fandoms – with deepened consumer connections (where sports itself also plays a key role on the fan-front).
While live sports help deliver on reach for advertisers, fandoms and engagement are meant to help deliver on another common refrain and theme for brands heard at Upfronts: Performance.
Disney, Fox and NBCU all have different rights, IP and plans for programming and DTC platforms, but Upfront presentations highlighted those two commonalities in the message delivered to advertisers and content strategies pursued by the media companies with somewhat distinct portfolios and assets.
Sports, sports, sports
An emphasis on live sports (alongside companion and shoulder programming) likely comes as no surprise, as the genre is often touted as one of the remaining types of programming that can draw large, simultaneous audiences with appointment TV viewing.
In addition to reach, sports stand to bring passionate fans – who are likely tune in for more than just one game or one season.
NBCU kicked off the week with its Upfront at Radio City Music Hall, where Chairman of Global Advertising & Partnerships Mark Marshall suggested that instead of shying away from its status as a “legacy” media company, instead it views that legacy as an asset and is leaning in as NBC gears up for its 100th anniversary.
“On [NBC’s] 100th anniversary, our legacy is our greatest competitive advantage,” Marshall said. “It’s built on evolution, innovation, and a relentless focus on consumer behavior.”
NBCU is coming off the heels of a year that saw it deliver major live sporting events including the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics in February.
It won’t benefit from those tentpole sports events in the year ahead but did tout expansions of its Sunday Night sports strategy and lineup – which it said is the biggest consumer spending day of the week.
With recent deals, NBCU now has a Sunday Night lineup across major league sports including football, basketball and baseball – representing a full-year calendar for fans, alongside scale and predictability for marketers.
And the company is looking to help advertisers get a better view and have a larger impact from advertising against live sports with its Live Total Impact capability, which takes a brand’s message during large live events and retargets and re-exposes those viers across the NBCU portfolio on linear and streaming.
Unveiled earlier this year, some are already seeing results, like State Farm, which generated a +90% incremental lift in insurance quote starts.
“We know that these live moments create lighting in a bottle for your brands, but the question has always been what does it do for the rest of your investment?” Marshall said. “That’s why we’ve created Live Total Impact, a first-of-its-kind capability that leverages the initial viewing of your ad in live events and then retargets those consumers across our entire linear and digital portfolio.”
Separately, over at the Javits Center next year’s Super Bowl LXI host Disney had a lineup of sports personalities and athletes on stage for its Upfront. From past and present NFL, NBA and WNBA players to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and tennis icon Billie Jean King (who hit a few balls into the audience).
Goodell was on stage with broadcaster Joe Buck highlighting the NFL and ESPN’s expanded relationship to now include the NFL Network, NFL RedZone distribution and the NFL Fantasy App.
And it’s not just major league sports. Tapping into cultural sports of the moment, Disney opened the event with a performance by sports-entertainment and viral sensations Savannah Bananas. It also announced Disney+ is now the official home of the Banana Bowl baseball championship, set to stream in October.
Fox, which more recently debuted the Fox One streamer but had been slower to jump into the streaming space as it fared relatively better than some others in the pay TV, had its share of sports-focused pitching during its Monday Upfront.
The company brought Tom Brady on stage to present, who also emphasized connections to viewers and a fan-first strategy at Fox, asserting it helped in his decision of where to go next after a long NFL career.
“I’ll be honest, there were a lot of options, and like in football, I did my homework,” Brady said. “And I leaned about Fox, all the strategy, the focus, the connection with the fans, and it made a very tough decision a lot easier.”
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch reiterated the sentiment of a focus on engagement, where he said the company isn’t trying to do everything but puts focus where it matters most, including live sports, live news and ad-supported streaming via Tubi.
Among Fox’s upcoming live sports lineup is the 2026 FIFA World Cup, airing 104 matches in total.
As mentioned, part of the picture for advertisers is reach that’s delivered by live sports and hard to come by with other types of programming.
It’s a factor Murdoch touted during the Upfront while simultaneously asserting that reach alone is not enough to build relationships advertisers want. And that’s where connection, engagement and, yes, fandom, come in to play a role for brand success.
Boasting fandoms, consumer connections
As for fandoms, each presentation hit on this a bit differently but were sending a similar message to brands and ad buyers, in that they have content and IP that’s fostering communities and fan engagement that keeps viewers coming back for more – and can extend beyond just the programming itself.
NBCU leaned into fandoms for the unscripted powerhouse of Bravo – where the company previously unveiled plans for the Peacock product roadmap with user features designed to nurture fandoms including new mobile-first experiences and short-form content.
It’s also trying out new formats with its first-ever original microdrama vertical video Bravo series poised to debut this summer. And fandom and engagement was touted for content across NBCU’s late-night, news and unscripted reality series slates.
"Whether it’s Late Night, the TODAY show, Love Island, Traitors or even Summer House, we are connecting your brands with our fandoms across all platforms,” said NBCU’s Marshall on stage.
Fox strategizing for fandoms, engagement
Fox, meanwhile, also touted deep consumer connection, and a focus on those audiences as a guiding strategy for the company.
“This focus on our most deeply engaged viewers isn’t just verbiage, it’s how we designed and build our business,” Murdoch said. “We’ve been deliberate in shaping a portfolio that puts us in a truly unique and powerful position in the marketplace.”
That includes through the mix of appointment-viewing real-time events like live sports “with massive reach” and pairing that “with the ability to connect with hard-to-reach younger audiences through Tubi.”
The presentation emphasized the lifetime value of sports fandoms while also touting Fox News and related TV personalities. Among the upcoming entertainment slate, Fox highlighted a reboot of the series Baywatch as something that will attract a new generation of fans.
“To be effective, your message must show up where audiences are leaned in, where every second counts,” said Jeff Collins, president of Advertising Sales, Marketing and Partnerships at Fox, on stage. “And that is where Fox fandom delivers, not passive reach, not incidental impressions, but real relationships with highly engaged fans.”
Per the presentation, that includes Fox interacting with 200 million people each month across over 1 million devices.
It also introduced the Fox Fan OS, an agentic AI operating system that’s built on a combination of two platforms – the Fox Fan Studio (focused on fan experiences) and the Fox Ad Studio (which connects brands to fans in the right moment).
AVOD streamer Tubi also garnered attention during the Upfront as an example of Fox engaging and attracting fandoms - for which the platform is also tapping into social video creators and storytellers that come from outside of traditional Hollywood avenues.
And particularly fandoms among younger and more diverse audiences who will not only watch but talk, post and share about content in other environments as well, according to Tubi CEO Anjali Sud.
Disney has built “generations of belonging” new chief says
Like NBCU, Disney also decided to lean in rather than shy away from its legacy during the 2026 Upfront as it relates to fandom and consumer connection.
With a long history of iconic family-friendly characters across TV and film IP, fan-favorite franchises like Marvel and Star Wars, as well as theme parks, newly minted Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro made his own Upfront debut – positioning the entire media company as a fandom built over generations and across multiple cohorts.
With his roots as a parks executive, D’Amaro described the feeling of child going to a Disney theme park, suggesting it’s one that doesn’t fade but “becomes part of who someone is,” adding “that is our entire business.”
“No focus group invents that. There’s no algorithm that produces it, no amount of capital can buy it,” he continued.
D’Amaro contends that’s what others in the industry – as well as brands and buyers in the room – are trying to buy or assemble with various platforms, sports rights, studios and so on: Aka content, brands and characters that “audiences feel something about.”
And in a world of fragmentation, he says Disney already has all of these elements that others are racing to build.
“You can’t acquire 100 years of trust. You can’t put generations of belonging on a balance sheet,” D’Amaro said. “Disney is part of people’s lives in the way that few brands have ever been. And in a world of infinite choice and constant distraction, that kind of presence is rare, and it’s getting rarer. When people choose something, return to it, and then pass it on, that’s not viewing, that is belonging.”
He pointed to this fandom for Disney across properties, be it kids dressing up as a Pixar animated character for Halloween, diving deep into the interconnected plot lines of the Marvel universe, or an adult yelling at a ref call while watching their favorite team on ESPN.
“That is the audience that our partners get to reach. Not viewers, fans,” he said. “Our audience is the ones who have been showing up for generations.”