SBJ Media: Ad buyer interest soars around ESPN college hoops

It was a fantastic week of content and catching up with folks around four SBJ events in NYC last week. Check out the behind the scenes coverage around Media Innovators and Dealmakers, as well as New Voices Under 30 and Forty Under 40.

And an early Happy Thanksgiving to all! So much sports content this week. Love it.

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.

The sports documentary space is robust, but it ain’t easy. I’m hearing that “Starting 5” is getting benched after a two-season run on Netflix.

The NBA-focused effort tracked five players over the course of the season, and even with a fortuitous ending with two of its characters reaching the seven-game NBA Finals (Pacers G Tyrese Haliburton and Thunder G Shai Gilgeous-Alexander), the audience just wasn’t there to keep the show going. Rockets F Kevin Durant, Clippers G James Harden and Celtics F Jaylen Brown were also featured in Season 2, while Lakers F LeBron James, Kings F Domantas Sabonis, Warriors G Jimmy Butler, T’Wolves G Anthony Edwards and Celtics F Jayson Tatum were featured in Season 1. Omaha Productions, James’ SpringHill Co. and Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground were executive producers on the show.

Netflix’s first batch of internal data for “Starting 5” Season 2 won’t be available until early 2026, but as noted by the Entertainment Strategy Guy, various third-party numbers weren’t looking good for the series. Internal Season 1 numbers from Netflix during the second half of 2024 were well behind the NFL docuseries “Quarterback,” and that trend was likely continued in the back of half of this year with both series’ second seasons.

Netflix did not have any comment.

The folks at Intersport are in the thick of it right now with college basketball. Over a 35-day stretch, the Chicago-based agency will handle 69 games. But perhaps the two that will draw the biggest audiences will be on Thanksgiving Day, as CBS and Fox both have men’s games airing around their annual NFL slate.

After Fox airs Packers-Lions at 1pm ET, the network will immediately air North Carolina-Michigan State opposite CBS’s NFL game. The matchup, part of the Fort Myers Tip-Off event that Intersport operates, should draw one of college hoops’ top-10 audiences this regular season. In prime time, after a huge Chiefs-Cowboys game and opposite NBC’s Bengals-Ravens game, Duke and Arkansas face off in the CBS Sports Thanksgiving Classic -- another event operated by Intersport.

The Fox game is part of a long-standing relationship that Intersport has with the network for these multi-team events (MTEs), while CBS’s deal is a one-off rights pact. “Just being in traffic in the scheduling world and knowing people and having constant conversations where you hear some things that could fit together, you stare at your big board and connect the dots and call everybody and work it through and manage relationships and get it through to the finish line,” Intersport SVP and GM/Basketball Mark Starsiak told SBJ.

In total, Intersport owns 10 in-season college basketball tournaments and operates another four. The MTEs and their future are definitely top-of-mind for Starsiak as well as what new legislation might mean for such events next season and beyond. “How teams are going to utilize those and then how networks are going to choose to broadcast those,” he said in terms of what he’s paying attention to. “We’re fortunate to have games on just about every network. Intersport has 30- and 40-year histories with all of those networks, so I like our positioning going forward with all those folks. I’m just interested to see how the network and conference partners approach some of these things as we get into the new era of scheduling.”

The NFL is going to likely draw its two best NFL regular season numbers of 2025 on Thanksgiving with Packers-Lions on Fox in the early window and Chiefs-Cowboys on CBS in the late window.

Just before the season, I wrote about what it would take for the Chiefs-Cowboys game to deliver the league’s first regular-season, 50-million-viewer game (ESPN’s Peter Schrager was thinking the same thing over the weekend).

But it’s going to be tough. The Cowboys and Chiefs are both on the outside of the playoff picture right now (just a 54% and 10% chance, respectively). However, these are still huge brands and they’re both coming off big, come-from-behind wins on Sunday. It needs to be a really close game (and likely a shootout) for this one to hit 50 million.

Regardless, I think Chiefs-Cowboys gets to 40 million easy.

WNBA viewership has exploded in recent years, and ESPN women’s basketball mainstays Ryan Ruocco and Rebecca Lobo both told me they’re positive a labor deal will get done. “It would be the greatest own goal in the history of sports,” Ruocco said. “A work stoppage would be detrimental to everything they’ve been growing. And I do think that regardless of whatever posturing is happening publicly, regardless of whatever negotiating is happening, I do think you have really smart people on both sides who both recognize that this is a moment where momentum needs to continue, not be stopped.” Lobo, who reupped last week, added: “I’m really confident that both sides are going to find common ground, because there’s so much at stake now, where there hasn’t been as much at stake in past years just because the level of interest was not where it is now.”

Netflix isn’t that interested in sports, right? Well, the Athletic reported Monday evening that ESPN’s Elle Duncan is likely to become the new face of Netflix’s sports division, making her the service’s first high-profile, full-time on-air personality. This comes after many networks have said they no longer want to share their talent with Netflix as the company expands into more live events, such as Christmas Day NFL.

NBA fans get an early feast on the night before Thanksgiving, as ESPN will have its first tripleheader. Pistons-Celtics starts things off at 5 p.m., then Timberwolves-Thunder and Rockets-Warriors. The NBA on ESPN is up 24% after 11 games (1.62 million viewers). “Inside the NBA” is averaging 927,000 viewers after four shows, while “NBA Tip-Off” is averaging 716,000.

College wrestling fans are super loyal. For the two days of coverage of the recent National Duals Invitational on FloSports, which didn’t even include the finals: 21 million video views, 3 hours of time spent per user and over 1 million social engagements.

• Cris Collinsworth called his 500th NFL game last night with Bucs-Rams on “Sunday Night Football.” That dates back 35 years to a game on Sept. 9, 1990, on NBC. Some fun numbers stand out for Collinsworth: He’s worked in 52 NFL stadiums, with 13 play-by-play partners across four networks and two streamers, one game as a sideline reporter, studio analyst on five networks and 17 individual Sports Emmys. The most teams for those games? That’d be the Cowboys with 67 games, just ahead of the Packers with 66.
• The latest episode of SBJ’s Sports Media Podcast features Prime Video’s head of sports content Charlie Neiman, who joined me at Media Innovators to chat about Amazon’s NBA deal, another strong year for “Thursday Night Football,” the Masters and the big Black Friday slate coming this week.
• SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo and I report that MLB unveiled short-term national media rights deals with ESPN, NBC and Netflix. Fox, TBS and Apple TV will remain as partners over the next three seasons,
• My SBJ colleague Joe Lemire takes a look at how ESPN is fueling the personalized SportsCenter for You beta product in its new direct-to-consumer app.
• The NWSL’s behind-the-scenes docuseries “For the Win: NWSL” will move from Prime Video to ESPN for its second season, sources tell SBJ soccer writer Alex Silverman.
• In the latest SBJ Gaming newsletter, Jason Wilson takes a deep dive into the additions and improvements coming to the second “Madden NFL Cast” for Bengals-Ravens on Thanksgiving on Peacock.