A few months ago, NBCUniversal ad sales chief Mark Marshall descended from the ceiling of Radio City Music Hall to pitch advertisers during upfronts week.
Seems like that high-wire act made an impact.
NBCU announced this week that it had wrapped the 2025–2026 upfront season by hitting its highest ad sales volume ever. The company attributed some of that growth to its stacked sports lineup that includes NBA games for the first time in more than two decades, the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, the 2026 Super Bowl, and the FIFA World Cup, as well as the media giant’s efforts to court small- and medium-sized businesses and boost its programmatic offerings.
Overall, categories such as retail, auto, and travel each saw growth of about 12%, according to the company. In a statement, Marshall described this upfront season as the “most successful…in our company’s history,” but the company did not disclose total revenue or rates.
“In a year set to redefine industry benchmarks, ad-supported reach remains the most influential force in media,” Marshall said in the statement.
Live sports supremacy: The company said this was also its best sports upfront ever, seeing a 20% growth in its advertising client base compared to last year Even excluding tentpole events like the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and the World Cup, NBCU saw a 45% growth in volume YoY. When it comes to those upcoming tentpoles, they also made records: NBCU’s Telemundo, which has the rights to the Spanish-language broadcast of the World Cup, reported its “best upfront to date” and record World Cup revenue with 10 months still to go.
On the broadcast side, NBCU touted 15% YoY growth, which it said was due in part to the NBA, where over a quarter of advertisers will be first-timers to broadcast. (As part of a rights deal inked last year, NBCU has the rights to a significant number of WNBA and NBA games through 2036.)
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Keeping it real: Reality titan Bravo has seen “steady growth over the past five years” in terms of NBCU’s overall entertainment demand across broadcast and cable, the company said. And streaming platform Peacock, which also houses plenty of live sports streams, saw over 20% YoY growth, accounting for almost a third of NBCU’s total upfront dollars. Overall, Peacock had its “largest digital upfront in history,” according to the company.
The cable channels that are soon to be housed under Versant, the planned spin-off company that will include properties like CNBC, MSNBC, and USA, saw an almost 10% bump in clients. (NBCU is set to continue handling ad sales across the Versant properties for the next two years as part of an agreement announced in May.)
Going small: According to NBCU, many of the ad dollars committed to NBCU this season came from the 30% net-new SMB clients it picked up this cycle. On the programmatic side, almost 60% of investments are “now transacted on advanced audiences,” signaling a move beyond the more standard demographics like age and gender.
Zoom out: The results from NBCU indicate the potential that advertisers are still prepared to spend big, especially on live sports, despite broader economic headwinds that have threatened to put a damper on advertiser upfront commitments. No wonder there’s such an intense fight for sports rights between traditional TV giants and streaming platforms.