The upfront season is about to tip off, and Amazon has some new offerings checking into the game.
Last year marked Amazon’s first time entering upfront week, shaking up pricing while bringing its Prime Video ad tier to advertisers. Now, the company is coming to the 2025-2026 upfront season with a multisport approach, Danielle Carney, head of live sports and video sales for Amazon Ads, told ADWEEK.
Among its 2025 sports programming, Prime Video will launch the NBA globally, showcase its Nascar Cup Series coverage, and continue its live tentpole coverage for the NFL, WNBA, and NWSL. In addition, the company’s portfolio of global sports offerings includes the NHL (Canada), UEFA Champions League (Italy, Germany, Ireland, U.K.), and tennis’ Roland Garros (France) and Wimbledon (Austria, Germany).
Regarding the upcoming upfront, the company is already “kicking off all those conversations with marketing partners” and gaining “traction and interest,” Carney told ADWEEK. With those talks already underway, Carney previewed Amazon’s upfront playbook for its new offerings.
Amazon announces NBA Black Friday doubleheader
At ADWEEK’s Mediaweek event in 2024, Carney shared that Amazon would have an NBA Black Friday game once its new 11-year rights kick in for 2025. Now, the Amazon executive revealed that the company will have an NFL game lead into an NBA doubleheader on Black Friday.
In year two of its NFL Black Friday game, Amazon told ADWEEK it had 30% more brands airing interactive ads. And according to its own data, interactive ads were 11 times more effective in drawing fans’ interest than QR codes aired during the game.
Amazon’s Black Friday NBA doubleheader will bring those same shoppable capabilities, along with other potential offers for advertisers.
“What we’re ideating around, too, is a couple of bigger moments across the entire day, and we’re working through what that could be and how we partner with both retail and our customers around it,” Carney said.
Additionally, with NBA Christmas Day games being a tentpole of the league’s season, Amazon is also planning an advertising push around the holiday.
“Christmas falls on a Thursday, so we have a nice ending to the shopping season with that moment,” Carney added.
New opportunities to partner with NBA studio
Unlike its Thursday Night Football games, which feature its talent traveling from stadium to stadium, Amazon is building its own studio to house NBA programming, including new presenting sponsors and creative integrations for brands.
According to Amazon, the studio will offer opportunities such as premium in-studio brand placement, virtual executions, in-game placements, and presenting sponsorships of highlights and replays.
“These rights don’t come up often. It’s very rare that you get this opportunity to build from the ground up with partners. And we see that as the perfect opportunity,” Carney said about the company’s NBA studio. “We’ve had a lot of hand-raisers and interests around, ‘How do we build together?’”
Amazon is looking to fill its studio with premium talent, with former NBA players Blake Griffin and Dirk Nowitzki coming on as analysts and Emmy Award-nominated sports journalist Taylor Rooks hosting Prime Video’s NBA studio show. The talent and the games will also be supported by surrounding coverage.
“We launched our packages into the NBA, so you’ll see a pregame, a postgame—probably an extended postgame—is where we’re landing on that,” Carney explained about the upcoming NBA support programming. “And if you’ve watched Thursday Night Football and Nightcap, you know that type of fun vibe that we give and a little bit of an extended postgame.”
Amazon is offering first-party measurement capabilities for sponsorships
Carney told ADWEEK that Amazon will now offer first-party measurement capabilities in live sports, measuring sponsorships as it would with 30-second ad units and offering measured audiences and outcomes for presenting sponsors and advertisers, including the visibility of creative and in-studio sponsorships.
Thus far, the company has only had a “few closed-door” meetings on the offering, but now, Amazon is talking about it publicly for the first time.
“We’ve been building, for the past two years or so, the right tech to be able to dynamically insert sponsorship elements, to be able to capture first-party data on those, and all of that will look exactly like what you’re able to capture when working with Amazon on any of your 30-second media,” Carney said.
Carney explained that marketers could create remarketing segments off of viewers who saw their sponsorships, adding that Thursday Night Football data has revealed that sponsorships can add 10% more audience incrementally.
“You understand who’s watching it and when and what the segments are, and it opens up the door to have a lot of conversation around how should we be thinking about the next touchpoint you have with the consumer,” Carney said.
Bringing capabilities across its portfolio
Amazon is already in-market with its current WNBA offerings, but it is also gearing up for its new rights deal with the league, which starts in 2026 and will “look a little different,” as Amazon will have “full control of all the production,” Carney explained.
“Regardless if it’s the NBA or the WNBA, the storytelling around athletes is something the team and I are focused on, elevating those conversations and those stories,” Carney added, “whether it’s through our sports originals or through partnerships with brands to build custom content around the athletes.”
The executive explained that those stories and brands are extended across its portfolio through various outlets, such as Amazon Alexa, Fire TV, and more, as the company looks to drive messaging further through the funnel and impact purchasing.
“There are a lot of new opportunities,” Carney said. “This is really a pivotal year for us with sports.”