ESPN has added 31 new advertisers for the college basketball season, which heats up this week with a handful of big Thanksgiving tournaments. Overall, Disney and ESPN have 220 sponsors for the college hoops season across both men’s and women’s games, said Danielle Brown, Disney’s SVP/sports streaming and brand solutions. Disney is at 78% of budget for the year, Brown said.
State Farm is back as one of Disney’s biggest advertisers in 2025-2026, as the insurance firm sponsors the network’s “College GameDay.” It also sponsored last week’s “Champions Classic” that featured Duke, Kansas, Michigan State and Kentucky -- an event that drew its best TV audience in three years on ESPN. Lowe’s is returning to sponsor ESPN’s “Feast Week,” while Kay Jewelers is another marquee returning brand. Brown said the largest new advertisers for this year are Amazon, Volkswagen and OpenAI.
As for the future, Brown said AI is a hot category that likely will continue to grow. On the women’s side, more beauty brands are raising their hands. “Saying they want to be a part of it or at least have the discussion around it,” Brown said.
Disney used to have separate ad budgets for both the men’s and women’s seasons, but because of the rise in women’s sports in recent years, those budgets are now converged into one. “There are advertisers that want to obviously play in both spaces, and we are obviously happy to do that,” Brown said.
Brown believes the reason for the strong sales is multifaceted. There’s been the implementation of Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel metrics, which have juiced ratings for many sports since being introduced in September. She also pointed to the year of the “NBA sons.” Dominique Wilkins’ son, Jake, is a freshman at Georgia. Carlos Boozer’s twin sons Cameron and Cayden are at Duke. Carmelo Anthony’s son Kiyan is a freshman at Syracuse. And LeBron James’ son Bryce is a freshman at Arizona.
“There’s so many players that are trying to forge their own path,” Brown said. “So that has been a storyline that I think fans are really into.”
Brown said ESPN has more than 7,100 college basketball games across all of its platforms this season.
