NBCUniversal Ad Exec Touts Strong Interest in NBA, Live Events Amid Tariff Uncertainty

NBCUniversal feels confident heading into the 2025-26 upfront, which the media giant is touting as its biggest and most important season ever as it gears up to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

The company will own nearly 40% of big live-event viewership in the U.S. over the next two years, including Super Bowl LX, The World Cup, The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and the launch of the NBA on NBC and Peacock. Those franchises join Sunday Night Football, the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and NBC’s tree-lighting ceremony for Christmas in Rockefeller Center.

In an interview ahead of Monday’s presentation, NBCU’s president of advertising partnerships Alison Levin told TheWrap there’s “a lot of interest” in the big moments NBC’s content can deliver, and the “deep engagement” that such events create with viewers.

The pivotal time for NBCUniversal comes as Comcast gears up to spin off its cable network portfolio minus Bravo into a standalone, publicly-traded company called Versant by the end of the year. NBCU will continue to sell domestic ad inventory for Versant’s properties for the next two upfront cycles, including for CNBC, E!, Golf Channel, MSNBC, Oxygen, Syfy, USA and digital platforms Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and SportsEngine.

Global advertising chairman Mark Marshall will continue to manage the sales strategy and revenue for NBCUniversal and Versant’s key premium properties, while NBCU’s platform monetization president Tom Winiarski will transition to Versant in the newly created role of executive vice president of ad sales strategy and monetization.

“It’s business as usual,” Levin said when asked about the spinoff’s impact on upfront negotiations.

President Donald Trump’s tariff policy will likely be a topic that’s front of mind during negotiations, as multiple ad buyers previously told TheWrap they’re taking a “wait and see” approach given the economic uncertainty making brands reevaluate their ad budgets and spend.

“We can’t predict the market and what the market will do. We are focused every day on consumer behavior and categories that we’re watching closely, but we are really focused on what we can control,” Levin said.

Comcast’s media segment reported a 7% drop in domestic advertising revenue to $1.9 billion during its first quarter of 2025, primarily due to lower revenue at its linear networks that was only partially offset by an increase at Peacock. The advertising results were impacted by the volume and timing of sports content and tough political comparisons.

Speaking to analysts last month, Comcast Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong acknowledged that advertising tends to be cyclical but said the company is well positioned for the coming year, including the launch of the NBA.

NBCUniversal’s portfolio reaches a total of 226 million monthly U.S. adults across its linear and streaming platforms. Its content, inclusive of Peacock, is 95% ad-supported, Levin said.

She touted the engagement of Bravo, which has a total 34 million viewers and 168 million social media views per month and has seen 48% year-over-year growth with its original content on Peacock; and “The Today Show,” which reaches 70 million adults monthly. She also highlighted sports on Peacock, noting that the service will offer 7,500 hours of live sports programming, or 312 days worth of continuous viewing, in 2026.

“What we see consistently is that there are different audiences across streaming and linear with little duplication. To actually maximize your reach and engagement, you need to be buying across the full portfolio,” she added.

Comcast recently launched Universal Ads, which will allow ad buyers and sellers to more easily buy and sell premium video from NBCUniversal and partners including A+E, AMC Networks, DIRECTV, Fox Corporation, Paramount, Roku, TelevisaUnivision, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Xumo all in one place. NBCU also partnered with VideoAmp, Kochava, Walmart Connect and EDO to improve their attribution and measurement capabilities for ad campaigns.

“Our ability to be agnostic in the space and work closely across the industry has helped us differentiate,” Levin said.

In addition to competition from Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global, NBCUniversal is also fighting for a share of ad dollars with tech giants like Alphabet-owned YouTube and Amazon’s Prime Video, the latter of which flooded the ad market with inventory by making an ad-supported viewing experience the default for subscribers back in January 2024.

Ad-supported platforms across the media landscape accounted for 72.4% of TV viewing in the first quarter of 2025, compared to 27.6% for ad-free platforms, per Nielsen data. Cable and broadcast made up roughly 28.9% and 28.7% of ad-supported viewing, respectively, while streaming accounted for the remaining 42.4%.

“We believe deeply that there’s opportunity ahead for many players, but we’ve also had a strategy that is quite different,” Levin said when asked about growing ad-supported competition. “From a reach and engagement perspective the percentage of ad-supported content is critical, and we have one of the highest in the marketplace.”

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