You had significant announcements with major names on stage: Super Bowl-level news.
Again, all the marketers and agencies were impressed, and we did a phenomenal job of bringing it to life, and we always say it, and it’s true, but we are the home of soccer, and you saw that on stage in spades.
Let’s talk about soccer. Last year, your salsa dancing was the talk of the town, and you danced on stage this year too. But you also headed to Mexico City for soccer. Will we be seeing salsa at future upfronts? The audience is expecting it at this point.
I would say stay tuned. Never say never. Everybody knows I like to dance. The reason that I do a lot of these videos—the first one was a salsa dance, and this one is to shine a light on the experience of our audience. The first video was really about partnership. This is obviously a lot about teamwork, but the goal was to show the passion and the fandom and the culture of what this audience has for soccer. It was a huge education for me, being at Azteca Stadium. I had never been there before, and the fandom is unbelievable. I’ve never experienced anything like it, even in an NFL game. And I’ve been to many, many football games. My goal is to keep doing it. I have to keep beating the drum, no pun intended, and every chance I get, show clients and share with clients the difference and nuances of our Hispanic audience and the passion and culture they have for all aspects of our content—whether it’s music and entertainment and our tentpoles, which is you see when you go to a Latin Grammys, PJs [Premios Juventud] or a soccer game.
It will definitely be a slower pace, only because of timing and people just not being ready. But conversations are happening and will be continuing for a while.
Donna Speciale on the state of upfront talks
Last year salsa, this year soccer, next year maybe something new—but what was harder of the two?
Probably salsa, only because if you saw the moves he made me do. That was definitely something I didn’t expect myself to do, but I had a really good teacher, and when you have a good partner, you can do anything, which is what that was all about. But those steps were probably the hardest for me.
I could certainly never do that. But did you actually score a goal in the video?
I actually did. I totally did score it. They were great. The women I played with were phenomenal. Trust me. I was not as good as any of them on the field. But they were great, and the legends that I played with, the guys, were phenomenal. I did do a header. They didn’t show it, but I did it.
Shifting gears a little bit, TelevisaUnivision was one of the few presentations that was able to have talent on stage. Was your presentation impacted by the strike?
It was not impacted at all. Everybody that we had going showed up. We had one person not show up, but it had nothing to do with the strike, it had to do with scheduling. But we were not impacted at all.