Live sports streaming is “the ultimate ad product,” says NBCUniversal ad leader
Illustration by Robyn Phelps / Shutterstock / The Current
Media companies are investing billions of dollars in live sports rights, confident that advertiser demand will follow. However, Alison Levin, president of advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, believes key opportunities remain — especially in programmatic activations, which many advertisers are still overlooking.
Speaking at The Trade Desk’s Forward 25 event in New York last week, Levin highlighted programmatic as the next big frontier in live sports streaming.
“People are planning for sports, and people are planning for streaming, but not many people are thinking enough about streaming sports, and what does that opportunity look like, and what does programmatic access look like,” said Levin.
Case in point: the NBA will stream on Peacock starting October as part of a $77 billion, 11-year deal, that includes regular-season games on NBC/Peacock on Sunday and Tuesday nights and exclusive Peacock games on Monday nights plus playoff games. Levin said the company will take inspiration from its highly lauded 2024 Paris Olympics coverage, leveraging cutting edge technology and ad innovations to enhance the viewer and advertiser experiences.
“What an opportunity to introduce to new consumers what [the NBA] can look like with new experiences. Think about everything that we've done on the Olympics, new advertisers, new opportunities, new targeting, attribution,” she said. “This is the ultimate ad product there is.”
By the numbers
At Forward 25, Levin used data to underscore the scale and potential of live events and sports as key ad opportunities.
“As it exists today, 70% of hours across our properties are live moments,” said Levin, pointing to live sports but also stalwarts like the Today Show and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Advertisers are responding. “In the last year alone, we grew 50% year-over-year in the number of advertisers who bought into live moments across our properties,” she said.
NBCUniversal saw a similar upward trend during the Paris Olympics last year, which marked the first time in Olympics history the Games were offered programmatically. “90% of the advertisers who activated programmatically with The Trade Desk for the Olympics never activated on the Olympics before that,” said Levin, which included the San Diego Zoo.
Advertisers’ investments in the Olympics paid off, as evidenced by the net new audiences the Games attracted on Peacock. “About 94 to 95% of the people that we reached with two of our top advertisers on the Olympics were unreachable on any other AVOD in streaming,” said Levin.
“We had a thesis that there is a cohort of consumers who watch live sports on streaming, who are just so hard to reach in other places, maybe they buy subscriptions without ads, but in live, that's where you reach them,” added Levin.
What’s ahead
“We have the biggest year in our history,” said Levin, as the storied media giant prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary next year. NBCUniversal says it will offer advertisers unprecedented access to all these major content moments. Here’s a preview of upcoming programming.
In 2025:
- September: The 20th season of Sunday Night Football.
- October: The NBA returns to NBC and debuts on Peacock.
- November: BravoCon. “My personal Mecca,” said Levin.
- December: The holidays and the Rockefeller Center tree lighting.
In 2026:
- February: The Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Italy; Super Bowl LX; the NBA All-Star Weekend.
- March: The Winter Paralympics in Milan-Cortina.
- June and July: The FIFA World Cup on Telemundo.
Highlighting the intense pace of work the company is preparing, Levin quipped, “I’ll sleep in 2027.”
The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk.