Exclusive: TelevisaUnivision Sells Out Copa América Ads With an Assist From Lionel Messi

Brands that didn’t buy into Copa América coverage will have to watch the tournament final from home like any team not from Argentina or Colombia: Ad space is officially sold out.

Conmebol’s first Copa América in the United States since 2016 has been a massive success for TelevisaUnivision, whose live sports coverage currently accounts for 19 of the top 20 Spanish-language programs aired in the U.S. during 2024. Since the tournament started on June 20, TelevisaUnivision has been the No. 1 network in primetime in any language, according to the company.

Overall, Copa matches have accounted for 8 of the year’s top 10 Spanish-language telecasts.

Among the highlights, Mexico’s draw with Ecuador on June 30 attracted 3 million total viewers. Though Mexico was eliminated in the group stage, it averaged more than 2 million viewers for Univision during its run. 

Additionally, Lionel Messi-led Argentina’s win over Canada in the semifinal drew 1.17 million viewers, while his Barcelona/Inter Miami teammate Luis Suarez and Uruguay’s loss to Colombia brought 1.3 million. Even the quarterfinals averaged 1 million viewers, led by the 1.4 million who saw Argentina defeat Ecuador.

TelevisaUnivision’s Copa América coverage through the semifinals was seen by 44% more people than its 2021 Copa coverage, and by an audience 23% greater than Fox managed this year for the same tournament.

Along the way, TelevisaUnivision’s Asi Studios branded content branch helped Copa sponsor Mastercard create an ad featuring former Mexican national team player Hector Herrera and Ted Lasso actor Cristo Fernandez subbing in for a local business owner. It also worked with Verizon on a fan-centered social ad during Mexico’s 1-0 loss to Venezuela in Los Angeles.

ADWEEK spoke with John Kozack, TelevisaUnivision’s evp of multimedia sales, about putting up big numbers in big moments and harnessing the power of a growing fanbase in sports marketing.

ADWEEK: TelevisaUnivision is wrapping up both its Copa América and Euro coverage this weekend. How have the two tournaments worked out for the company concurrently?

Kozack: We are the home of soccer. Over the last month, what we’ve seen in the results have just reinforced it between Copa América and UEFA Euro Championships. 

It’s been unbelievable for us. We have dream matchups: Three out of the four teams [in the Copa semifinals] were Spanish-speaking countries, so it couldn’t have gone better with Colombia and Argentina playing in the final on Sunday. This could be Messi’s last soccer tournament for the national team, so this is going to do blockbuster ratings for us. On Sunday, we have the UEFA Euro Championship, and then we go right into Copa América. 

You’ve sold out your ad inventory for Copa América. What does that mean for TelevisaUnivision’s sports coverage historically, and how did you get there?

We’ve been selling this for a year, and now we’re sold out. It’s nice to say because this has been the highest-grossing revenue tournament ever for Univision, excluding the World Cup. We’ve seen tremendous success, and we’ve seen blue chip brands coming in from Verizon, who bought out the complete category for us, and then Constellation, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Samsung … all leaning into soccer, and there’s a lot of momentum.

When did you know Copa América was going to sell out, and what helped push it over the line?

The big sponsors—even Verizon buying out the wireless category—happened a while ago, right in last year’s upfront. Then what we’ve seen is, as the tournament has gone on and the matchups and the fanático around Argentina, Messi and Colombia [grew]—and, by the way, the U.S. and Mexico didn’t fare so well, and it didn’t hurt us at all—this is the tournament that U.S. Hispanics care about because every single team has fans [here]. We had a very good base laid in with sponsors across all of our platforms.

As the tournament went on, the ratings success we had and how we’ve been able to evangelize it in the market, we literally sold out this week because of these dream matchups.

With Copa América sponsors, including Mastercard and Lowe’s using Lionel Messi’s presence, and Verizon and Degree engaging with fans and players from around the tournament—rather than just the U.S. or Mexican national teams—do you feel that helped increase TelevisaUnivision’s value as a platform?

Yes. We’ve known this for years, but soccer is exploding in the U.S., and we might be very close to that tipping point. Copa América is just one thing that is going to help, and having it in the United States was very smart by [governing body Conmebol], and there’s no doubt it helped our sales.

How did Copa influence the way that you approached sales and pitched potential buyers?

The approach hasn’t changed because we know we are the home of soccer. What has changed is now that we have Asi Studios, our branded content capabilities, that’s different. We haven’t done that before. We have our streaming service VIX, Asi Studios and our social creators, so we push this content out and reach everybody at scale now. That’s the difference between this year’s Copa América and our soccer versus five years ago or four years ago.

How are you able to use your Copa experience to plan for future tournaments?

These tournaments attract the entire Hispanic U.S. population. 

If you’re a fan of Colombia, you’re all in. If you’re a fan of Panama, you’re all in. Then you have the broader teams like Argentina, Brazil, of course the U.S. here, so we want to be everywhere our consumers are. You can’t just be on linear TV nor would you want to. You want to buy our content that we push out on all of our social handles, you want to buy our content on our streaming service … so it’s really about maximizing reach, and all of our advertisers get that.

The marketplace has changed and continues to be dynamic. But the good news is we have these platforms to be everywhere our audiences are, and that’s a big difference from where our company was three years ago.

As the ad sales landscape shifts and buyers weigh the merits of traditional 30- and 60-second spots against programmatic and integrated ads, TelevisaUnivision’s Copa América coverage seemed to succeed in finding a balance along that spectrum. How do you find that equilibrium?

You want to have live sports. If you’re a publisher, you need to have live sports.

We have live sports, we’re the home of soccer and our linear business is strong. It’s strong with live sports. It starts there, quite frankly. And if you look at Univision, we’re talking about Copa América in our morning show, Despierta America, and then in some of our daytime shows. It lives throughout our ecosystem. The Verizon Halftime Report—that still matters, and that’s still where you get the mass reach.

On Sunday, we have the Euro Championship—Spain versus England— at about 3 p.m. Eastern time. Then we have the Copa América on the same day at 8 p.m. What we’ve done is in between those two games, we call it a bridge show, and we’re going to host a studio show where everything about what you just saw during the Euro, and then we’re going to preview the Copa América final in primetime. We have to show that we just created to keep viewers engaged.