Amazon‘s bid to be a Prime mover during TV’s annual Upfront Week is causing it to crash into long-held industry protocols.
The streaming and e-commerce giant plans to shift its upfront presentation to the Monday evening of the week of May presentations that top media companies hold annually for Madison Avenue. In doing so, Amazon will likely force some advertisers to abandon other events that have long been held in that slot. Fox Corp. traditionally holds an upfront presentation late Monday afternoon, while NBCUniversal‘s Spanish-language Telemundo network has for the past several years held a Monday-night event and concert for advertisers.
Rivals believe Amazon’s maneuver will make Mondays more manic. What’s more, the new event is likely get in the way of not only their scheduled presentations, but ancillary meetings that have already been set between advertisers and the networks’ sales executives.
“The Upfronts are a longstanding tradition with a set schedule every year that is built on cross-industry collaboration in service of our collective agency and client partners. NBCUniversal’s Monday evening Telemundo event is an integral part of this week. And with the Latino community driving massive purchasing power in our industry today, it is critical that the advertising marketplace has the chance to connect with Telemundo, the #1 Spanish-language broadcast network, especially given that it will be home to the FIFA World Cup in North America in 2026,” says Mark Marshall, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCU, in a statement. “The counterprogramming of Upfront events is unfortunate to our agencies and clients.“
“Historically, Upfront week has successfully maintained a schedule that best serves clients’ needs and respects their limited time,” says Jeff Collins, Fox Corp.’s president of advertising sales, marketing and brand partnerships, in a statement. “It’s unfortunate to learn that another event has been shoehorned into an already packed day for advertisers, because ultimately Upfront presentations are for them.”
Amazon plans to hold its upfront at New York City’s Beacon Theater at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, May 12. During the upfront, the annual advertising market during which 70% or more of TV networks’ commercial inventory is sold ahead of the next programming season, Mondays have long been the province of NBCUniversal, which holds events in the late morning and evening, and Fox, which makes a presentation in the late afternoon. In 2024, Amazon held its first upfront presentation on a Tuesday morning, in a time slot that had been vacated by Disney.
A person familiar with the matter said Amazon was “not concerned” about the proximity of its event to those of rivals. The company declined to make executives available for comment.
Amazon intends to talk to advertisers about new opportunities tied to its ad-supported streaming tier, along with programming and content tied to Prime Video, Amazon MGM Studios, Fire TV Channels, Twitch, Wondery, IMDb, Amazon Live, and Amazon Music.
The company has reason to elbow its way to the start of the week. In late 2025, Amazon will gain rights to stream a significant 66-game NBA package previously housed at Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT. Those games could be worth as much as $750 million in new ad revenue to Amazon, according to an estimate from Robert Fishman, a media-industry analyst with MoffettNathanson. He projects that Amazon will pay approximately $1.795 billion per year for its NBA rights. Amazon has already unveiled plans to go after holiday-season advertising by pairing a special NFL “Black Friday” game with an NBA game in 2025. The company also has NASCAR rights.
Still, Amazon’s Monday-night entry will nettle traditional competitors. Fox is also heavily dependent on live sports rights — particularly those tied to the NFL and Major League Baseball — to generate ad revenue. Meanwhile, Telemundo figures into the future sports plans of NBCUniversal, which will also have a new NBA package in 2026, as well as rights to telecast Super Bowl LX.
Ironically, Fox once pushed its way into Mondays. In 2009, Fox moved its upfront, which was typically held on Thursdays and capped off the week, to Monday, NBC’s longtime roost. At the time, then-NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker had decided to abandon the traditional upfront presentation for the NBC broadcast network and instead hold an “experience” around the company’s Rockefeller Center headquarters in New York that nodded to everything from CNBC to “American Gladiators.” Since there was no upfront-as-usual for NBC, Fox executives thought, what would be the problem?
NBCU returned the favor in 2016, tapping Jennifer Lopez to lead a Monday-evening concert aimed at promoting Telemundo. The Spanish-language outlet has held forth on Monday nights ever since.
Now Amazon has a case of the Mondays. “We’ve received positive feedback from agencies and brands leading to strong demand following our first upfront with Prime Video ads,” says Alan Moss, vice president of global ad sales, in a prepared statement. “Advertisers are leaning into our comprehensive offering of full-funnel advertising solutions. We’re connecting campaign tactics across awareness, consideration, and conversion into a cohesive strategy to directly measure the contribution of each tactic and enable on-going business growth.”
Amazon has tripped over sensibilities in the past. The company’s 2024 upfront event was held at a venue in lower Manhattan, far from the rest of the week’s presentations. Amazon delayed the start of its show until most guests could enter the venue, and the late end time made the process of attending a subsequent showcase from TelevisaUnivision more difficult.
Amazon played a sizable role in the 2024 upfront, just after it announced plans to make an ad-supported version of its Prime Video service the default for all users. Those who wish to avoid commercials must now pay an extra fee. The sheer tonnage of commercial inventory created by that decision put pressure on streaming ad rates — and is likely to have an effect on the sales process in 2025.