Disney nearly sold out of ad inventory for college football championship

With less than two weeks to go until the College Football Playoff (CFP) National Championship, the ad sales team at Disney, which holds the exclusive media rights to the CFP, is “damn close” to selling out, according to Jim Minnich, SVP of revenue and yield management.

Even in a calendar period jam-packed with events like the Winter Olympics and Paralympics and the Super Bowl, demand and prices for college football are on the rise, Minnich said, a trend driven by multiyear partners, increased spend from returning advertisers, and new advertiser categories like AI.

“Brands are spending more because they’re seeing results,” Minnich told Marketing Brew. “There’s a different opportunity with college football than there is [for] other football properties.”

40-yard dash: The CFP welcomed 40 new advertisers to its lineup this season, including two AI clients, OpenAI and Anthropic, Minnich said. Liberty Mutual and Zoom are also among the biggest new advertisers. There are several movie studios and media companies among the new cohort—such as A24, Peacock, Sony Pictures, and FX—as well as fast-food restaurants like Arby’s and KFC and tech companies like Meta and LinkedIn.

The CFP also has a number of long-term and returning advertisers, including AT&T, Mercedes-Benz, and Vrbo. Of those returning advertisers, more than half increased their spend this season compared to last, according to Disney Advertising.

With demand on the rise, CPMs have also been increasing, Minnich told us. Ad prices for the championship game in particular are higher than they were last year: Minnich declined to specify the exact increase, but said there’s been “healthy growth year over year.”

The game plan: Multiyear partners “set the baseline for demand” for properties like the CFP National Championship and occupy quite a bit of college football ad inventory well in advance, Minnich said. Typically coming out of the upfront period in the spring, Disney Advertising is down to “single-digit avails” for CFP units, he said, the rest of which are then sold in the scatter market.

Headed into the playoff games on Thursday and Friday, Minnich said he was waiting to sell the final handful of championship ad units until the matchup was locked in, but that he has expectations of a strong audience regardless. Quarterfinal viewership outperformed last year by 14%, with more than 19 million viewers on ESPN. During Thursday night’s game, Miami secured its spot in the championship, which will be played in its home stadium, with a 31-27 win over Ole Miss.

The longest yard: As of Thursday morning, Minnich said his team was already finalizing contract renewals for the 2027 CFP, when ABC and ESPN also hold the broadcast rights for the Super Bowl. With this year’s Super Bowl, plus the Milano Cortina Games on the horizon, Minnich said he was prepared for some competition for ad budgets, but noted that the CFP has established itself as a tentpole in its own right.

“The interest is there from a demand standpoint, but I think the audience is following as well,” he said. “We’ve seen record-breaking audiences in [ESPN College] GameDay throughout the season, and record-breaking audiences on ABC college football. It’s a yearlong conversation.”