Media Buying Briefing: In this year’s upfront, sports is playing offense, defense and referee

OK, ad marketplace — media buyers, marketers and all associated media players — what you just experienced this past week wasn’t an upfront. It was a sportsfront.

Sports content, both live games and all manner of shows around sports, dominated the upfront presentations like no other source of programming. From new NBA and NFL rights holders, to sports-themed series, to Michael Jordan returning to TV in some vaguely-defined capacity with NBC Universal’s NBA coverage, sports dominated all the upfront conversations and even some of the prior week’s NewFronts. 

This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. Continue reading it on digiday.com and subscribe to continue reading content like this.