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As the big upfront week presentations finally give way to behind-the-scenes bargaining, ADWEEK holds its postmortem conversations with those leading the industry’s ad sales.
First up was NBCUniversal. Now, it’s Fox’s turn, as—coming off a year that included the most-watched Super Bowl ever and Fox News soaring in ratings—ads chief Jeff Collins steered his company’s event through a diverse array of sports, digital, news, and entertainment offerings.
The Fox upfront presentation from New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom on Monday looked into the cornerstones of its strength, including Tubi programming like Sidelined 2: Intercepted and Breaking Bear, aimed squarely at younger viewers. Meanwhile, Fox News segments focused as much on the guests in the interview chair as the reporters asking questions, and the company showcased growing sports offerings, including the 2026 World Cup, an NFL Week 16 doubleheader just before the holidays, and IndyCar coverage just before the Indianapolis 500.
In addition, Fox peppered its announcements with appearances from stars including Michael Strahan, Erin Andrews, Brendan Fraser, Annie Murphy, Jamie Foxx, and Rob Lowe.
After the event, Collins spoke with ADWEEK about demand for Fox’s expanded NFL lineup, its interview-focused approach to selling Fox News, and the strategy behind taking Tubi to both upfronts and NewFronts.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
ADWEEK: Fox is airing 11 NFL doubleheaders in 2025, including one during Week 16 on December 20. With 31 NFL broadcast windows in total, can you tell us what buyer demand has looked like for the NFL and if there will be any digital/shoppable ad inventory for the pre-holiday Week 16 slate?
Collins: NFL continues to see very healthy demand across the marketplace. We saw that demand last year in the upfront in scatter, and now we’re seeing that again in this year’s upfront market. I think that’s partially driven by the fact that it’s just increasingly rare to be able to find those mass audiences anywhere these days. The NFL, on a consistent basis on a Sunday, is drawing over 20 million viewers.
In terms of specific executions for Week 16, we’re still working on that, so we don’t have a whole lot to report yet. But, suffice it to say, you should be seeing some interesting things.
Fox used the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl to highlight its IndyCar coverage, which saw a 25% uptick in viewership last season during Fox broadcasts. Considering the recent success of open-wheel racing in the U.S. through Formula 1 and its narratives around drivers and teams, how have Fox’s IndyCar campaign and its upfront segment with team owner David Letterman and two-time Indy 500 champion Josef Newgarden sold the circuit to buyers?
One of the benefits of Fox is that we have this tremendous promotional platform across all of our live assets, and we’ve been able to utilize that to promote IndyCar. Robert Gottlieb, who’s our CMO on the sports side, has been able to produce some amazing creative that connects fans to the actual drivers and the drivers’ stories, just helping them become more relatable. I think you’re seeing that having an impact as well.
The IndyCar fans are incredibly engaged, but then it’s also introducing a whole new set of fans to IndyCar and having them realize how exciting and dynamic the actual races are, and we do that through a number of different ways. Marketing is obviously one of them, including our non-motorsport talent in IndyCar events like the Indy 500, where Michael Strahan will drive the pace car. We’ll have other high-level talent there as well, and all of those things help to bring in new audiences and expose them to the races.
Speaking of the Fox platform, the Fox One streaming platform was announced before the upfront, but didn’t play a major role in it. What has the rollout looked like, and how is it being presented to buyers seeking inventory around its fall launch?
You heard [Fox Corporation executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch] speak about it on our earnings call that the service is really designed to reach cord-cutters and cord-nevers and truly provide an incremental audience on top of our linear audiences and advertisers.
In terms of the advertising experience for the first six months or so, our live content will have pass-through ads, so our existing advertisers that are buying into our linear properties will get the added audience benefit of the new signups that are coming on into Fox One. Those will be incremental audiences from what they’re currently getting with their normal linear buys. And then on the VOD side, that will be supported with dynamic ad insertion, so we’ll be able to insert ads into the VOD stream there. So we’re excited about it, and we’re getting quite a few questions from advertisers about it as well, and they’re excited to tap into new audiences that have been very elusive for them through other channels.
Fox brought Tubi to both NewFronts and upfronts this year and distinguished it both from competitors and within the Fox portfolio. What has the buyer reaction been to an established Tubi, and how does ad interest on the platform differ from the rest of the portfolio?
We wanted to take part in both the NewFront and upfront. This year, we approached them differently: The NewFront, we approached more with our technology announcements and data announcements, whereas the upfronts were much more around content, creativity, and programming.
The Tubi value prop is very complementary to Fox. We have these massive live audiences in sports and news. We have a big broadcast creation vehicle, and then Tubi complements that by reaching the cord-cutters and cord-nevers, and it’s really designed to reach that audience. So advertisers have taken note, and what they appreciate more than anything is the incrementality of that audience and the reach that it extends to what they’re getting with linear programming.
Fox illustrated some of the synergy between Tubi and its other properties by showing NFL teams and players acting out scenes from Sidelined: Me and the QB. Does that get ad buyers moving around the portfolio a bit?
For our advertisers, it really comes down to the audience and how it complements what they’re doing across the rest of our portfolio. That’s why they buy Tubi in conjunction with a lot of our live offerings in terms of the programming. What you’re seeing is it’s really being programmed for a different audience, quite frankly, than what you might find on linear. It’s being programmed for younger, diverse cord-cutters and cord-nevers, and a movie like Sidelined really accomplished that by bringing in Noah Beck and Siena [Agudong] and their social connections that obviously drove tremendous numbers for the first five or six days of viewership.
That’s a model we’re going to be moving forward with to continue to engage with these young audiences that are just increasingly hard to reach.
Fox News made a strong, metrics-heavy pitch for the news division that didn’t veer into discussions of brand safety. How does that approach work out for the network?
We’ve seen a tremendous amount of interest from advertisers heading into this year’s upfront around Fox News, being driven by a number of things.
One is just the dramatic audience growth that it continues to see even post-election. First-quarter, Adults 25-54 numbers were up 58%. It was the second-highest-rated network after CBS in all of TV. The sheer scale is hard to ignore in all of media.
Then, on the other side, is just the coverage that we’ve had. We tried to highlight that throughout the upfront with Bret Baier and the interviews that he’s had with everyone from [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, the night that he was in the White House, to Bernie Sanders last week… folks from all sides of the aisle. He’s getting the biggest newsmakers, and they’re coming to him.
And you’re seeing Democrat involvement in digital.
It’s become the hottest platform for Democrats to publish their columns. So [California Governor Gavin Newsom], [Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren], [former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg] have all penned pieces on FoxNews.com, and that’s one of the things that’s driving the 120 million uniques that FoxNews.com has.
We’re seeing it across linear, where the content that we’re delivering is incredibly strong. It’s reaching diverse audiences politically, so more Democrats and more independents than the competition, and more Republicans as well, and advertisers have taken notice. We’ve had over 200 new advertisers since the election that have come on board.
Part of Baier’s presentation at the upfront centered around Fox News’ interviews—its ability to get people in its chair vs. that of competitors, and the value of those interview subjects. Will this become a more regular portion of Fox News’ pitch to ad buyers?
One of the things you see now is that, because of the size and scale of the Fox News audience, it’s not just the advertisers that have taken notice—it’s the news makers, and they’re coming to Fox News first to get in front of the largest audience in news. So we are getting those best interviews, which again, is fueling higher and higher ratings, which in turn is attracting more news makers. So we do have this virtuous cycle here that’s happening within news, and we’re not seeing that slow down anytime soon.
