Warner Bros. Discovery Closes Nearly $6 Billion Upfront

Warner Bros. Discovery has finally wrapped its upfront talks, the company confirmed during its second quarter earnings call on Thursday afternoon. With the news, the company becomes the final major in-person upfront week presenter to cross the negotiation finish line, following Disney, NBCUniversal, TelevisaUnivision, Paramount, Fox and The CW. "We did very well at the upfront and believe we have meaningfully outperformed our peers," Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav told investors. "As I said in our [upfront] presentation, we see ourselves as essentially the fifth broadcast network due to our unparalleled portfolio." According to Zaslav, the company earned low- to mid-teen CPM (cost per thousand viewers reached) increases and nearly $6 billion in upfront commitments. Warner Bros. Discovery Sets Ad Sales Leadership Team, Including Jon Diament and Jim Keller A source familiar with the matter confirmed to Adweek that Warner Bros. Discovery's Premiere package, which offers a mix of the company's top-rated programming, including sports, entertainment and lifestyle, "redefined" and drove the upfront sales process. Additionally, sports was sold as part of the company's broader portfolio for the first time in the upfront, which greatly contributed to overall increases. Though the company's CPM increases were greater than the high single-digit increases reported by several other upfront week presenters, Warner Bros. Discovery fell short of competitors NBCUniversal and Disney in total commitments. Both NBCU and Disney reported their most lucrative upfronts ever, securing $7 billion and $9 billion in commitments, respectively. In June, Jon Steinlauf, Warner Bros. Discovery's ad sales chief, spoke at Credit Suisse's 24th Annual Communications Conference, offering an update on negotiations and emphasizing the importance of Warner Bros. Discovery Premiere. “We have a different paradigm this year. The way we’ve chosen to go to market with Premiere is not the way advertisers normally buy mixes. This is a mix that consists of sports, entertainment, lifestyle news, some syndication,” Steinlauf said. “This is a process that requires more complexity than they’ve seen in the past. However, they really like what we’re doing, because we’ve created a one-stop shop for the best of Warner Bros. Discovery and all of these great brands.” Following its $43 billion merger in April, Warner Bros. Discovery's Premiere offering pulls from the best of the combined company, including WarnerMedia's Warner Bros., HBO, TNT, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network and HBO Max and Discovery’s HGTV, TLC, ID, Food Network, OWN, Magnolia Network and Discovery+. Speaking with Adweek in May, Steinlauf opened up about the Premiere offering, which the ad sales chief put the spotlight on during Warner Bros. Discovery's first upfront presentation as a combined company. "Premiere is something that advertisers can embrace and say, 'This is much-needed supply at the top end of the business.' It’s more of a modern mix of primetime because it blends together different genres. But I think that’s necessary right now. We shouldn’t look at primetime as just being the entertainment on those four [broadcast networks]. It’s just too limited. We need to expand it," Steinlauf told Adweek. Unifying streaming services During the earnings call, Zaslav announced plans to create a unified SVOD service, combining HBO Max and Discovery+. Until then, they will operate separately. In May, Steinlauf told Adweek he was looking at HBO Max and Discovery+ as "separate but together," since some advertisers may gravitate to one or the other. "They’re both new to ad sales. So we wanted to talk about the benefits of having those two services together as a company, which helps us with our advanced advertising, which helps us with our data-driven linear, which helps us with all the tech advancements that are going on," Steinlauf said. Though the services have yet to be officially combined, Warner Bros. Discovery announced several apparent consolidation moves on Thursday, including CNN films and shows arriving on Discovery+ and select Magnolia Network programming coming to HBO Max. Combining the ad sales teams Prior to wrapping upfront sales, Steinlauf announced the leadership group for the combined sales team. Among the exec positions, Jon Diament will oversee linear and digital sales for TBS Sports, TNT Sports, Discovery Channel, Adult Swim, Animal Planet, truTV, Science Channel, NBA TV and MotorTrend; Laura Galietta leads integrated ad sales marketing across all digital and linear properties; and Jim Keller will set the strategy for Warner Bros. Discovery streaming and digital products. “Warner Bros. Discovery has the greatest collection of brands to offer advertisers, and our new leadership team will unlock that unique value to best drive success for our clients,” Steinlauf said in a statement on the new team. “This organizational structure combines strengths from each legacy organization with a set of client-focused, results-oriented leaders across brands and platforms who will create innovative, impactful advertising opportunities for our partners.” News broke in June that Warner Bros. Discovery could cut up to 30% of its ad sales staff in an effort to streamline the team. At the time, the company confirmed Steinlauf sent an internal memo to U.S. staff offering a “voluntary separation program” to qualifying employees. Steinlauf spoke at Adweek’s Convergent TV Summit East event in April about the need to combine the WarnerMedia and Discovery sales teams, saying, “The question really is how do you take two great sales organizations and make one great sales organization holding on to the best of the best.”

TV Upfronts

Warner Bros. Discovery Closes Upfront With Nearly $6 Billion in Commitments

The company also reported low- to mid-teen CPM increases

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