One great example is what we do around Veterans Day, where we have different parts of the portfolio honor our veterans in very different ways, but when you put them together, they are very complementary. The Super Bowl is another great example where we’re able to demonstrate how the full portfolio can come together with Tubi’s purple carpet, around food content and—because it’s down in New Orleans—with entertainment.
Fox is juggling a presidential election and a Super Bowl in one upfront cycle, with a little help from new NFL on Fox announcer Tom Brady. What has his addition done for demand?
We’re very happy with the demand that we’re seeing right now. We’re in active conversations, clients are eager to secure premium positions in the game, and coming off such an incredibly strong year for the Super Bowl—it was a great game, great storylines.
But it’s not just a Super Bowl. It’s year-round. Our sports coverage has been terrific and has scaled incredibly well. We have the NFL, but also MLB, Nascar and soccer. We’re seeing really strong demand across all sports. Having Tom Brady is going to be a huge draw for audiences and for advertisers. He’s incredibly dynamic, as you saw on stage, and he adds a lot in terms of analysis and how he looks at the game in a very unique way that we think is going to be really important for both our audiences and our advertisers.
Does having Brady back in New Orleans—where he played his first Super Bowl in 2002—and Nielsen tweaking its measurements do anything to push ad prices beyond the $7 million for 30 seconds threshold?
We’re excited about all the talent and everyone that we have that’s going to be covering the Super Bowl. We think Tom is going to be an amazing addition. You’re talking about the greatest quarterback of all time.
There’s no comment on the pricing side.
The presidential election can be a thorny sell, but Fox wove it right into the upfront. How comfortable has the company been with approaching advertisers during presidential election years?
Fox has always been very true to who we are. One of the highlights of the program for me was the emotional moment when Ben Hall came out and received a standing ovation from the crowd. That really speaks to heroism. But also pulling in Trey Yingst and showing off some of our strong international coverage in the year when that has been so important was critical for us.
With the election coming up, having Bret (Baier) and Dana (Perino) out there demonstrating where our hard news and journalism come together to cover these really important events, and also demonstrate some of the innovations that we have around our election coverage, was important for advertisers. We had a lot of advertisers that are really leaning in around election coverage because they know the scale of the audience. They know how leaned-in the audience will be.