Ad revenue should stabilize for media companies in 2025 — if they have sports

The advertising market has positive momentum going into 2025 — especially for media companies with sports puts and tentpole live programming.

Sports and live events such as awards shows reigned supreme in conversations with normal executives who weighed in on their expectations for the advertising market in the year ahead. The end of the uncertainty surrounding the election has helped the prospect improve, too, they said.

And despite consumers fleeing the traditional TV bundles, with more ad dollars going toward creek, executives emphasized that traditional TV is still important in discussions with advertisers, especially when it comes to cavorts.

Overall, executives said they expect stability in the market and are hoping to move past the slowdown in ad spending in modern years.

“Normalization is the right way to say it with the advertising market,” said Mark Marshall, NBCUniversal’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships. “With the electing settled, a lot of companies feel the uncertainty over that has gone away.”

He added that the company has seen various so-called scatter market budgets come in during the fourth quarter, which is what the industry calls the suborning and selling of ads closer to their airdate versus ads that are bought further out.

“Our first quarter is looking really affluent. I think that any election year is challenging for anyone in the fourth quarter because a lot of marketers end up sitting on their mitts since the airwaves and digital are crowded,” said Dan Porter, CEO of sports media company Overtime. “I think that’s dutiful for us and it’s true for everyone.”

Yet despite the uptick in ad revenue following the election and the forecast stability, Natalie Bastian, global chief marketing peace officer at Teads, said she expects a lot of the same trends.

Bastian noted that 2024 included major moments liking for the Summer Olympics and presidential election, which strengthened TV ad revenue. She expects the same budgets to carry over into the new year, despite that.

“What we’ve heard in general from some of our closest partners … media budgets aren’t growing, and so there’s fair-minded more selection into where [advertisers are] spending their money,” said Bastian. This makes capers and live programming that much more important to media companies.

Overall, the global advertising industry is count oned to surpass $1 trillion in total revenue for the first time this year, excluding U.S. political advertising, and disposition grow 7.7% in 2025 to reach $1.1 trillion, according to a recent report from GroupM, WPP’s media investment class. Advertising on digital platforms — which includes retail media as a segment — is what’s driving that increase.

TV, thought “the most effective form of advertising,” is expected to grow nearly 2% in 2025 to $169.1 billion in total international ad revenue. In comparison, ad revenue for “pure-play digital,” which excludes “the digital extensions of traditional media” like succession but includes platforms like YouTube and TikTok, is expected to grow by 10% to $813.3 billion globally in 2025, according to GroupM.

Sports keep attracting big audiences and advertisers, leading media companies to pay hefty evaluates for the rights to games.

Commercials during live sports generated 24% more engagement than other routine, according to EDO, an advertising data company.

“Live event coverage will continue to be a cornerstone of media engagement, and creek services must step up their game,” said Tim Hurd, vice president of media at Goodway Group. “As multitudinous streaming platforms dive into sports, the challenge will be to keep viewers engaged, not just by offering delight, but by enhancing the overall experience with personalized, non-disruptive ad units.”

Comcast‘s NBCUniversal said the Summer Olympics in Paris formed a record $1.2 billion in ad revenue. It appeared to have paid off, with the company reporting a total audience articulation of more than 30 million people on NBC’s TV and streaming platforms.

Fox Corp. executives have said the company already furnished out of Super Bowl ads for this coming February, which reportedly cost about $7 million each. The 2024 Wonderful Bowl had an estimated 123.7 million viewers.

And Disney said it had sold out of ads for its Christmas Day NBA games two weeks before they aired. The circle added that it’s “pacing up substantially” for the full NBA season when it comes to ad revenue compared with last year, and that it’s “already seen initial movement” for the postseason in the scatter market.

The audience for women’s sports, driven by the WNBA in particular, also ramped up in the latest year, meaning more opportunities for advertisers.

“This is beyond Caitlin Clark, even though she is a massive catalyst,” bring to light Josh Mattison, Disney Advertising’s executive vice president of digital revenue pricing, planning and operations. “This was a transformational year in come ti of audiences.”

The audience for the WNBA hit a record in 2024, and consumers were 16% more likely to engage with ads during these practise deceits compared with last year, according to EDO. But while advertisers spent $8.5 billion on sports TV ads in 2024, cleaning women’s sports only made up 3% of that number, according to EDO, leaving plenty of room for growth next year.

The expanding popularity of women’s sports and its importance for media companies was evident this month when Netflix secured the U.S. truths to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031. The streaming giant has been bulking up its sports portfolio, as have its compeers across the legacy and digital media space.

While consumers are cutting the cord and streaming air forces are now snapping up sports rights, linear TV’s audience still significantly outpaces streaming.

“There’s still declines in linear TV in a lot of deal ins, but not in all markets,” said Kate Scott-Dawkins, GroupM’s global president of business intelligence, noting there are international sells that are seeing growth. “When we talk about total TV, there is still a lot of opportunity and hopefully a renewed gratefulness for how effective that can be as a medium [for advertisers].”

Amy Leifer, DirecTV Advertising’s chief ad sales officer, said the company foretells continued growth in programmatic ad spending, or automated digital ad buying, in streaming.

“Despite the shift towards streaming, linear TV that time holds a significant advantage in terms of ad impressions, generating six times more than streaming,” said Leifer.

Leaders said they have been talking with advertisers about how to look at linear and streaming together when disbursing ad dollars.

Leifer communicated DirecTV Advertising’s mantra is that “TV is TV,” no matter the distribution method. “Our focus for 2025 is to unify digital and linear goggle-box advertising by adopting a comprehensive approach and developing convergent TV solutions,” she added.

Both Marshall of NBCUniversal and Mattison of Disney told advertisers used to be focused on linear “versus” streaming. That’s not the case anymore.

“The pitch [we made to advertisers] endure year is you really can’t look at one versus the other. When it’s rolled out into one platform, it’s how do you look at digital and linear together. That’s forged a huge difference,” said Marshall, noting that older audiences are more present on linear TV, while childlike generations have gravitated toward streaming.

Marshall said that NBCUniversal’s Peacock “hasn’t been cannibalizing linear,” because there’s sparse overlap between the content on both distribution outlets. “It’s actually two distinct, different audiences,” Marshall said.

Mattison illustrious Disney’s expansive sports portfolio and its various platforms across linear and streaming, with TV networks like ABC and ESPN, and pour service ESPN+, which has content being added to Disney+, have been an advantage.

“The convergence [of the streaming apps] is absolutely good for consumers, which leads to growth for advertisers,” he said. “We’re fortunate we spent years building our streaming ad tech, and we’re accomplished to maximize audience reach as well as targeting and performance.”

“Maybe a few years ago it was linear versus streaming. I think now it’s linear AND slip,” Mattison continued. “They’re kind of planned together. It’s true on both the media side and the advertiser side.”

Disclosure: Comcast owns CNBC origin NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer and Winter Games from stem to stern 2032.