Fox Sports Sees Fastest Upfront Marketplace in a Decade Following Year of Uncertainty

A year ago, no one knew when live sports would make a return after Covid-19 forced the abrupt shutdown of every league, which complicated upfront negotiations. But Fox Sports is heading into this year's talks feeling better than ever about the state of the sports marketplace. So the company had a bit of swagger heading into its Fox Sports upfront presentation on Friday, one of three Fox Corp. upfront events that will be held within a week. Fox News Media's presentation, focusing on its lighter side, occurred on Tuesday, while Fox Entertainment's event is set for Monday afternoon. “Last year was a little bit of an unknown, tail tucked between your legs,” said Seth Winter, evp of sports sales at Fox Sports. “This year, there's a lot more confidence in everything that we do within our marketplace. We know that there's so much certainty around our scheduling as well as our ability to deliver audiences that people want.” Upfront talks kicked off nearly two months ahead of today's presentation. It’s been nearly 10 years since the football and upfront marketplace has moved this early for Fox Sports, which is already “pretty far along” in its upfront conversations, according to Winter. “For the first time in many years, sports is well ahead of the other dayparts in terms of conducting business and coming to conclusions,” Winter said. “They've engaged us first in sports because it's probably the best place to kind of achieve any scale and predictability and reach consumers.” During this year's talks, "the premiums are accelerating more dramatically than any prior year and in very recent history. Sports is the one ad-supported platform that's been relatively impervious to the fragmentation across SVOD and AVOD services," Winter said. The pandemic has brought some new categories to the sports marketplace, including home delivery and packaged goods. Fox Sports is also seeing the return of other categories that have been quiet during Covid-19, including theatrical, travel and dining. “We’re seeing a reemergence of what were sidelined categories as well as the retention of those that were emerging categories,” Winter said. “All of a sudden, we have a lot of different businesses that are playing in this fourth quarter. The streaming category is through the roof as well.” Focusing on football Football was Fox Sports' primary focus during its presentation. This will be its last season with Thursday Night Football, but Fox Sports isn’t upset about losing the package to Amazon. Winter said holding onto its National Football Conference Sunday football package was the company's top priority in the newest round of NFL rights deals. “Not that we didn't love Thursday and thought it was a great property, and we'll continue to handle it as such this year, but our focus was always to retain the NFC, and we were able to do that,” said Winter. Looking ahead to the coming NFL season, the schedule of which was unveiled Wednesday night, Fox Sports got “virtually all” of the games it requested from the NFL, including eight of its top 10 games and 12 of its top 15, with several key matchups featuring the Dallas Cowboys, the Green Bay Packers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “We’re delighted with our schedule,” Winter said. “We just believe in the power of the NFC markets, not only to deliver viewers and to create a national rating, but advertisers want the markets that we represent," including New York, L.A., Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. It’s not just about the strength of the NFL for Fox, however. Winter said that college football clocks in right behind the professional league, including the Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12 and Mountain West conferences. “We’re seeing significant strength in college football demand. Advertisers are really, really flooding into college football this year,” Winter said, pointing to high demand for Ohio State games again Michigan, Oregon and Minnesota. “We're pretty well along in our upfront conversations, and college is really sizzling right now in that marketplace.” Other growing markets While Fox Sports is hitting the ground running with football, other sports markets are showing strength as well. Nascar is seeing “tremendous growth” after many years of lacking price growth, Winter said, while baseball is “basically sold out” through the regular season this year. And even though the World Cup isn’t until 2022, those conversations have already started, speaking to the country's growing interest in soccer. “Soccer is a very interesting property right now,” Winter said. “You see some of the activity with rights holders and their pursuit of soccer. Soccer is garnering a lot of interest from a lot of different people in the marketplace. And the advertisers are certainly supporting it.” NFL Sets Huge New TV Deals With CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN/ABC and Amazon Prime Video