Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, will soon allow retail investors outside traditional brokerage channels to participate in US listed initial public offerings through tokenized equity allocations at the IPO price.
The company said its xStocks framework will let eligible customers of Kraken and select xStocks Alliance members submit interest in upcoming US listed IPOs before a company goes public. If allocations are approved, users would receive tokenized shares at the offering price on listing day through the exchange they already use.
The product targets a part of capital markets that has historically favored institutional investors, private banking clients, and platforms with direct underwriter relationships. Retail investors often gain access only after shares begin trading publicly, when prices may already have moved above the IPO level.
Under the process, partner exchanges will open an indication of interest window in the weeks before a listing. Customers can submit non binding offers within the company’s indicated price range, while Payward Services aggregates demand and works with an underwriting syndicate on behalf of xStocks Alliance partners.
On listing day, finalized IPO allocations will be tokenized and distributed to eligible customers. Each tokenized equity will be backed 1:1 by the underlying share, which will be held in custody by a regulated entity.
Mark Greenberg, Global Head of Payward Services, said going public should mean public to everyone. He added that access to IPO pricing has long depended on geography and net worth, while Payward’s xStocks infrastructure aims to make similar access available to retail investors in markets such as Medellín, Madrid, and Malaysia.
The offering builds on xStocks, Payward Services’ tokenized equities framework designed to make equity exposure portable across crypto platforms. The company said xStocks tokens are blockchain agnostic, interoperable across chains, composable with DeFi protocols, and available through platforms in the xStocks Alliance.
Payward said the xStocks framework has processed more than $30 billion in total transaction volume in its first year, including more than $6 billion settled onchain across over 125,000 unique holders globally.
Payward said the first tokenized IPOs powered by xStocks will be available in the coming weeks to customers of Kraken and other xStocks Alliance members, with plans to expand the offering to additional markets and partners.
Revolut expects to start operating its US bank next year as the UK fintech expands its push into regulated banking, stablecoins, and multi asset financial services, according to a Reuters report.
The company’s US bank is expected to offer FDIC insured products, including high yield investment and checking accounts, according to Cetin Duransoy, Revolut’s recently appointed US CEO. US clients will also have access to stablecoins, deposits in multiple currencies, stock trading, and crypto trading.
Revolut applied for a US national bank charter in March. Duransoy said the bank is expected to be headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, with an additional office in New York.
The company plans to focus first on clients with international financial needs. Revolut’s app supports services in more than 30 currencies, positioning the bank to serve retail and business customers that need access to dollars, rupees, Latin American currencies, and other foreign exchange products.
Revolut will not operate physical branches, though clients will have access to ATM networks.
The expansion comes as Revolut scales its US ambitions from a relatively small base. The company has 75 million clients globally, including 1 million in the US. Many of its US users already know the fintech through its operations in Europe, Latin America, or Asia.
Revolut reported 4.5 billion pounds, or about $6 billion, in revenue last year, along with 1.3 billion pounds, or roughly $1.75 billion, in net profit. The privately held company was valued at $75 billion in its latest funding round.
CEO Nik Storonsky has said Revolut does not plan to list its shares before 2028.
A 35-year-old USPS driver was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs and leading deputies on a chase during his shift last Tuesday, May 26.
Deputies arrived around 6:30 p.m. at Highland Avenue and Church Street to check on a postal worker who “was exhibiting unusual behavior and had stopped making mail deliveries,” a San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department news release said.
It did not specify what the unusual behavior was.
The driver refused to stop when a USPS supervisor called instructing him to do so, and when deputies tried to conduct a traffic stop around Terrace Drive, sheriff’s officials said.
Eventually, the vehicle stopped on Applewood Street, and deputies took the postal worker into custody.
He was released the following day, Sheriff’s Department records show.
Additional information was not immediately available.
India’s Iroller Media and Entertainment has partnered with Helsinki-based Norse Key Productions to handle distribution of “Bicycle Thief” across Europe and the U.S.
Norse Key founder Maria Kivinen will oversee the distribution push for the film, directed by Darshan Ashwin Trivedi. This marks the first European-U.S. distribution deal for the Ahmedabad-based Iroller.
“Bicycle Thief” centres on Savji, a Dalit man who leaves the Saurashtra region of Gujarat in 1993, seeking work and dignity in Sanand, Ahmedabad after years under bonded labour. He pays INR200 (then $6.50) for a second-hand bicycle to secure a factory job, only to be arrested when police identify the bike as stolen. He spends two days in custody maintaining his innocence before his life ends in tragedy. A parallel present-day strand follows a filmmaker named Rahul piecing together the truth of what happened to Savji. Director Trivedi spent close to a decade researching the real incident on which the film is based, which he has described as an unresolved case forgotten from Dalit history.
The production is Trivedi’s seventh feature and a tribute to Italian neorealist Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 classic “Bicycle Thieves.” The cast includes Hemant Kher – best known for his role in Sony LIV’s “Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story” – alongside Samvedna Suwalka. The film was produced by Milap Sinh Jadeja, Jignesh Patel, and Trivedi, with cinematography by Tapan Vyas and music by the duo Kedar-Bhargav.
“Norse Key is thrilled to add to its portfolio the first feature film from India which explores important human values and has a universal appeal,” Kivinen said. “‘Bicycle Thief’ is exactly the kind of film that deserves to be seen and felt by audiences everywhere.”
Trivedi’s earlier features include “Mrugtrushna (The Other Side of the River),” which won the Gujarat State Award in 2022 and the Golden Butterfly Award for best screenplay at the 33rd International Film Festival for Children and Youth in Iran, and “Mara Pappa Superhero,” which took best children’s film at the 20th Annual Tiburon International Film Festival.
Sam Reich isn’t expecting an Emmy nomination this year. He isn’t expecting to lose, either.
For the CEO of Dropout, the indie comedy streamer’s first-ever FYC event at the iconic Laugh Factory was never about a single outcome. It was about getting in the room.
“All we’re trying to do is get a little better every year,” Reich tells Variety.
The venue seats roughly 150 people. Dropout’s RSVP list topped 900. But the biggest surprise of the night wasn’t the turnout. It was the appearance of former “Dance Moms” doyenne Abby Lee Miller.
Allison Rabello for Westhaus
“She told me she’s a ‘Game Changer’ fan,” Reich says. “My wife, Elaine, almost fell out of the bathtub when I told her she came.”
That balance between intimacy and ambition sits at the center of Dropout’s current moment. With 11 Emmy submissions spanning “Game Changer” and “Very Important People,” Reich is mounting a modest campaign in a landscape dominated by billion-dollar media companies.
“Streamers are trying to be everything to anyone,” Reich says. “We’re trying to be something for someone. When you’re paying seven bucks a month for Dropout, you’re probably hardcore about us.”
That loyalty has helped turn “Very Important People” into one of the platform’s defining shows. Hosted by comedian Vic Michaelis, the prosthetics-heavy interview series thrives on improvisation and absurd character work. Season 3 featured performers including Frankie Quinones and Chelsea Peretti, along with other Dropout cast staples.
Reich says Michaelis possesses an unusually rare comedic skill set, managing to be “both straight man and funny person in a way that I’ve never seen juggled in another comic.”
The hilarious show enters the revamped outstanding variety series race at a moment when the Television Academy is increasingly opening to internet-native programming. Reich points to creators like Sean Evans of “Hot Ones,” Brittany Broski and Michelle Khare as part of the same broader movement. A breakthrough for any of them, he argues, benefits all digital creators trying to break into traditional awards spaces.
Nonetheless, for Reich, the Emmy push also functions as a larger branding exercise. As he describes it, Dropout is evolving, moving from “unscripted alt comedy” to simply “alt comedy,” with ambitions that may eventually stretch into animation, horror and scripted storytelling, especially for its flagship Dungeons and Dragons-inspired series, “Dimension 20.”
“We’ve been loosely or vaguely threatening a ‘Dimension 20’ animated something for a while,” he teases of the tabletop RPG comedy show hosted by fan favorite and game master Brennan Lee Mulligan. “We have a couple of irons in that fire that are ‘medium’ to far along at this point.”
Still, Reich resists anything that would ever be deemed as “traditional.”
“I hope that we never produce something that’s recognizable because I always want what we do to be just that little bit avant-garde,” he says.
Kate Elliott
Kate Elliott
Most of Dropout’s Emmy hopes rests on “Game Changer,” the competition series Reich hosts himself. The show’s blend of elaborate game mechanics and psychological humor has turned it into a cult phenomenon, particularly after an episode orchestrated by Mulligan turned the tables on Reich himself and became one of the year’s most talked-about installments online.
Season 8, which premiered in May, includes what Reich describes as some of the show’s strongest episodes yet. “Roulette 2” revives a format he felt was too elegant to abandon, while an upcoming episode, titled “Count the Rice,” ranks, in his estimation, among the series’ top five best.
“If you’re asking me if it involves counting rice,” Reich jokes, “it surely does.”
He also exclusively teases to Variety a future episode titled “What’s the Catch,” loosely inspired by the classic game show “Let’s Make a Deal,” saying it’s a “top five”-ever episode of the franchise and one of his personal favorites of the series.
Then there’s the matter of “Survivor.” Reich is a longtime obsessive about the CBS reality franchise, enough so that Dropout once devoted an entire “Game Changer” episode to it.
And of course, how could we not talk about “Survivor,” Reich’s longtime obsession to which he dedicated an episode years ago? Asked about Aubry Bracco and her Season 50 win, he praises her timing:
“Aubry for sure would have been my vote of the final three. She peaked at the exact right moment. It’s so key to strategy; not emerging as clever too soon.”
For a comedy executive navigating the rise through the Emmy ecosystem, the observation is perfect.
Welcome to our institutional newsletter, Crypto Long & Short. This week:
Alex Tapscott on the stalling of the CLARITY Act and how it’s impacting the average American consumer.
Aisha Hunt writes that crypto will grow by upgrading Wall Street’s trusted products rather than replacing them.
Top headlines institutions should pay attention to by Helene Braun
“RWA Perp Volume by Category: Equities Overtake Commodities” in Chart of the Week
-Alexandra Levis
Expert Insights
What about the American consumer?
By Alex Tapscott, CEO, CMCC Global Capital Markets
The little guy is getting lost in the political horse-trading around the CLARITY Act.
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee recently advanced the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, legislation that, if enacted, could finally establish clear rules for digital assets in the United States. The bill has survived months of bipartisan negotiations and horse trading between banking interests and upstart fintech companies.
A bipartisan compromise brokered by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) broke a log-jam that had slowed down the bill’s progress. In the end, the banks got most of what they wanted in this “deal”: the legislation explicitly prevents fintech platforms from treating stablecoins, digital assets backed by dollars, as interest bearing accounts, while still permitting them to pay rewards and bonuses, as banks and credit card issuers do.
That should have ended the debate. Yet banking lobby groups are demanding tighter restrictions to eliminate many forms of consumer rewards altogether. Clearly, they seek to squash this already compromised bill before a full Senate vote, so that it never reaches the Resolute Desk.
Lost amid the political wrangling of crypto and banking interests is the average American consumer.
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Americans paid roughly $5.8 billion in overdraft fees in 2023, even after years of industry efforts to reduce so-called “junk fees.” Overdraft charges disproportionately hit financially vulnerable households, with nearly 80% of fees concentrated among 9% of accounts. And then there are account minimums, wire charges and payment delays, which add friction. Meanwhile, the average savings rate is only 0.38%.
Consumers want financial services to move faster, cost less and earn them more.
Stablecoins are gaining popularity because they herald a world where digital dollars move across the internet as cheaply and seamlessly as a WhatsApp message. They can lower remittance costs, improve access to digital commerce, expedite real-time payments and create new ways for consumers to save, spend and transact online.
And Americans are asking for CLARITY because many already use these tools. According to the Crypto Council for Innovation, one in five American adults now owns cryptocurrency. That’s roughly 68.5 million people. Stablecoins are among the fastest-growing categories of digital assets, particularly among younger consumers, immigrants, freelancers and underserved communities seeking faster and cheaper financial tools. Four in five merchants believe accepting crypto could help attract new customers, while 73% of small business owners expect crypto payments to grow.
That’s what makes this debate so politically mystifying. For years, progressives argued that concentrated financial power harmed consumers and Main Street. They criticized large banks for extracting rents while lobbying against regulations that diluted bank influence. Those critiques were often correct. Today some of those progressives, like Elizabeth Warren, who championed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, are now defending banking profits against a technology that could inject real competition into financial services and empower consumers and small businesses.
Congress should pass CLARITY in its current form to benefit American consumers and preserve American competitiveness and leadership in the next era of financial technology. This lead is by no means assured: today, 88% of global crypto trading volume occurs on non-U.S.-based exchanges, while foreign-issued stablecoins account for 75% of stablecoin volume. Over the past decade, the U.S. share of global crypto developers has fallen from 38% to just 19%.
Do American politicians want their country to continue leading, or do they prefer watching such financial transformation from the sidelines?
In the 1990s, the Clinton administration helped usher in the commercial internet through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a bipartisan effort expanding innovation and competition. Now, Congress has an opportunity to unleash the new internet of value by passing CLARITY.
Under GENIUS and CLARITY, stablecoin issuers must meet strong reserve requirements, transparency obligations, anti-money laundering standards, cybersecurity rules and consumer protections. Sensible public policy will unleash investment and innovation, as it did in the internet era.
This story need not end in conflict between banks and blockchains. Incumbents can just as easily embrace blockchain and its various benefits, from real-time global settlement and tokenized assets, to new forms of on-chain lending, payments, savings and commerce.
The question is whether lawmakers will vote to lead this next technological revolution and advance the interests of American consumers or cede the future to entrenched interests.
Principled Perspectives
Why Crypto May Need ETFs More Than ETFs Need Crypto
By Aisha Hunt, founder of Kelley Hunt, PLLC
Crypto spent its first decade trying to replace Wall Street. Its next trillion dollars may come from partnering with it. The first wave of tokenization focused on creating new assets, new venues and new systems outside traditional finance. Some of that innovation mattered. Much of it struggled with the same problem: markets do not scale on technology alone. They scale on trust, liquidity and distribution. That reality favors ETFs.
The ETF wrapper became one of the most successful financial products of the modern era because it solved practical investor problems at scale: low-cost access, transparency, intraday liquidity, operational simplicity and broad distribution across brokerage platforms and advisory channels.
Those advantages took decades to build. Tokenization does not erase them. In fact, it may amplify them. If blockchain rails can be integrated into ETFs, investors may not have to choose between innovation and protection. They could gain exposure to familiar products with the potential benefits of faster settlement, programmable ownership, collateral mobility and broader digital interoperability, all inside a structure already trusted by institutions, advisors and retail investors.
That is a far bigger commercial opportunity than asking trillions of dollars to migrate into unfamiliar vehicles. This is why one underappreciated development matters. On January 21, 2026, F/m Investments LLC and The RBB Fund, Inc. filed what is believed to be the first exemptive application by an ETF issuer seeking to tokenize shares of an exchange-traded fund, TBIL, the U.S. Treasury 3 Month Bill ETF. The proposal would record ownership on a permissioned blockchain ledger while preserving the same fund, same economics, same exchange listing and same regulatory framework. The application remains pending before the SEC, and there can be no assurance relief will be granted. That may sound like a niche legal filing. It is not. It is a test of whether capital markets modernization happens inside the regulatory perimeter or outside it.
That distinction matters to investors because the next major on-chain growth category may not be speculative tokens. It may be trusted yield, usable collateral and regulated exposure. Stablecoins already demonstrated the demand for digitally native dollars. The next logical step is digitally native instruments backed by real portfolios, real governance and real investor protections.
That is where tokenized ETFs could become powerful.
Imagine Treasury exposure that can plug into next-generation collateral networks. Imagine ETF shares that remain within familiar regulatory guardrails while operating on more modern rails. Imagine advisors and institutions accessing blockchain efficiency without having to underwrite experimental structures.
The first tokenization narrative was “replace incumbents.” The stronger narrative may be “upgrade incumbents.” That does not diminish crypto; it commercializes it.
For regulators, tokenized ETFs may offer a pragmatic path forward: enable innovation where investor protections remain intact, rather than pushing demand into parallel channels with greater uncertainty. For exchanges, custodians, brokers and market makers, it could create a new infrastructure layer around products investors already understand.
For issuers, it may become a race. The firms that combine trusted wrappers, credible assets and functional on-chain rails could capture disproportionate flows. And for allocators, the signal may be simple: blockchain technology is becoming less about novelty and more about plumbing.That is usually when real adoption begins.
The broader lesson is that distribution often beats disruption:
Who already has trusted wrappers?
Who already has liquidity?
Who already has access to advisors, retirement assets and institutions?
Who can bridge old rails and new rails fastest?
Those questions point toward ETFs.
The next trillion dollars of tokenized assets may not come from inventing something entirely new; they may come from upgrading what already works. Crypto’s first era was about building outside the system. Its next era may be about powering the system.
Headlines of the week
By Helene Braun
A few of crypto’s biggest debates converged this past week as Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) sold bitcoin to fund preferred stock dividends, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon escalated his fight against yield-bearing stablecoins during the CLARITY Act debate, and Citi projected tokenized securities could grow into a $5.5 trillion market by 2030, driven by rising demand for onchain Treasuries and tokenized stocks.
Michael Saylor’s Strategy sold 32 bitcoin for $2.5 million to fund dividend payments: The 8-K filing Monday says proceeds from the May 26–31 sale, executed at an average price of $77,135 per coin, will fund distributions on Strategy’s preferred stock.
‘The banks will not accept it’: Dimon escalates battle over stablecoin rewards in CLARITY Act debate: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon criticized Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and warned the current CLARITY Act framework could ultimately fail, as banks and crypto firms clash over whether stablecoin issuers should be allowed to offer yield-bearing rewards that resemble bank deposits.
Citi predicts the tokenized securities market will grow to $5.5 trillion by 2030: Stablecoins alone will generate a demand for up to $1 trillion worth of onchain U.S. Treasury bills and $2.6 trillion for tokenized stocks, said Citi.
Chart of the Week
RWA Perp Volume by Category: Equities Overtake Commodities (excluding oil)
RWA perps run ~$45–60 billion/week, and flow is rotating out of commodities into equities. Equities roughly tripled to ~$18 billion and just overtook the commodities (excluding oil) block, while oil faded after its April macro spike. This implies that crypto-venue derivatives are increasingly used for 24/7 equity exposure, with commodities now the episodic, event-driven slice.
Listen. Read. Watch. Engage.
Listen: Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko Says Permissionless Systems Are Critical for Institutions.
Read: In “Crypto for Advisors”, Hassan Ahmed of Coinbase outlines the state of crypto, stablecoins and regulations in Asia, comparing growth to regions with clarity.
Watch: Bitcoin ETFs bleed $1 billion as capital rotates into HYPE, SOL, XRP.
Engage: Are you attending the ICI Conference in Nashville? Let’s connect onsite!
Looking for more? Receive the latest crypto news from coindesk.com and market updates from coindesk.com/institutions.
Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc., CoinDesk Indices or its owners and affiliates.
If the New York Knicks win the NBA Finals, they’ll have one person to thank. That’d be Danhausen.
The WWE wrestler, whose shtick involves laying theatrical curses on his rivals, seems to have actual supernatural powers over the team’s fortunes. On April 17, he went on ESPN and hexed the Knicks during a TV beef with host (and Knicks superfan) Stephen A. Smith. Within a week, they started losing games — to the Atlanta Hawks, no less.
But 11 days later, on April 28, Danhausen reversed the curse after a Knicks fan on Cameo offered to pay him (Cameo lists a cost of $200-plus for his services). The team instantly started winning again. They haven’t lost a game since, sweeping the Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers, building the most dominant scoring differential 10-game streak in NBA history.
Turns out Danhausen isn’t the only celebrity throwing down jinxes. Back in 2011, Lil B hexed Kevin Durant after the basketball star dissed the Bay Area rapper’s music on Twitter. Sure enough, Durant’s game stumbled for the next five years — until he signed with Lil B’s hometown team, the Golden State Warriors, and all was forgiven. “Welcome home KD,” Lil B posted, “the curse is lifted.” Durant went on to win back-to-back championships.
Then there was the time in 2018 when rapper and self-described witch Azealia Banks — who once posted a video of the blood-caked closet where she sacrificed chickens — got into an online spat with Lana Del Rey. Banks threatened to burn down Del Rey’s house with voodoo. That curse, though, didn’t take; the following year, Del Rey released her best reviewed album ever and her house is still standing.
And let’s not forget the Kardashian Curse — or Kurse — which while entirely unintentional may be the most potent of all: Any athlete who gets romantically involved with a K girl can kiss their career goodbye. Just ask Lamar Odom. Or James Harden. Or Blake Griffin.
Once again, the name “Jeffrey Epstein” has surfaced at the center of a Washington, D.C., scandal. Only this time it’s a very different Jeffrey Epstein — and the controversy in question involves a bunch of legacy musical acts who never owned any private islands.
You’ve no doubt heard something about Trump’s now-iffy plans for a Freedom 250 concert to be held on the National Mall over the Fourth of July holiday. How a slew of musicians who had signed up to perform — Martina McBride, Morris Day and The Time, Bret Michaels of Poison and Young MC — have since backed out after realizing that the event was being organized as a partisan gathering rather than a non-ideological celebration of the nation’s semi-quincentennial. And how, in the latest wrinkle, Trump has announced that he may call the whole thing off, or else turn it into a proper MAGA rally with himself — “the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime” — taking center stage.
Well, it turns out that many of the music acts involved in the kerfuffle are reportedly represented by a talent booker at New York-based agency Universal Attractions. And that booker’s name, through no fault of his own, happens to be Jeffrey Epstein. Even more remarkable, this booking agent isn’t the only Jeffrey Epstein working in entertainment. Rambling found another, a former magazine editor turned publicist at talent agency UTA.
The Epstein at Universal Attractions hasn’t responded to Rambling’s request to connect, and the Epstein at UTA isn’t talking either, but was kind enough to point Rambling to his social media feed, where he periodically posts good-natured reminders to the world that he is not who people think. “Love all the hilarious comments about my ‘island’ and lists,” he wrote on Instagram in 2024, during an early Epstein file dump. “I’m still not that Jeffrey Epstein.” In that same post, he helpfully answered the one question Rambling most wanted to ask. “I feel like the ‘why don’t you change your name’ ship has sailed,” he wrote. “But thanks.”
If he ever reconsiders, Bernie Madoff has a nice ring to it.
***
Also in Rambling Reporter:
From pro-wrestler Danhasen to LiB to Azealia Banks, a slew of stars are casting spells; Director Graydon Carter found himself getting photographed aboard a boat in the Mediterranean — he’s still trying to figure out exactly why.
This story appeared in the June 3 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
A number of top TV networks and streamers are making aggressive efforts to get advertisers to pay top dollar for sports even as Madison Avenue trims back the sizable sums it has given in the past to the usual fare, like dramas, comedies and reality programming. These negotiations take place as part of the industry’s annual “upfront” market, when U.S. media companies try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory ahead of their next cycle of programs.
Sports is of paramount importance this year, according to five executives familiar with current negotiations, because advertising budgets are down noticeably from last year’s haggle and games from leagues like the NFL and the NBA are one of the few things in which marketers see growing value. “There is not as much money as media companies wanted,” says one media-buying executive, who works on behalf of advertisers to secure commercial time. Another media buyer says many clients have cut upfront budgets by at least 10%, and in some cases by as much as 30% to 40%.
“There is really only one category that is up. All the others are either flat to down,” this buyer says. “Pharma is the only one that’s up — and not as up as everybody thinks.”
If the media companies want more dollars, they may have to offer concessions. Ad buyers say they are, once again, pressing for significant “rollbacks” on rates, particularly for streaming inventory that is supposed to represent the future of the medium. The supply of streaming ad time is huge, particularly with Amazon and Netflix in the market, the executives say, and much of it is not seen as high value to advertisers because consumers watch movies and shows on demand at times of their own choosing, That means the audiences at any given time are usually quite diffuse.
Amazon and Netflix have also grown bold about asking for top sports prices, according to buyers. Both companies are “overly aggressive on their sports,” says one buying executives.
Netflix, Amazon and Disney all declined to make executives available for comment.
“Sports are the darling of everything,” says one buying executive. “Where networks have sports and scarcity in supply, those are conversations we are having first. Places where there is no sports or less urgency and scarcity in supply, those conversations are slower.” Fox Corp., which has a large sports and news portfolio, but only a smaller amount of scripted entertainment, is likely to do well, buyers indicated, while owners of traditional cable networks focused on scripted fare may have a longer negotiation ahead of them.
NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment on the status of their upfront discussions.
Sports represent one of the few areas where the TV companies and streamers have leverage. The media companies have been able to strike deals for sports that typically call for mid-to-high-single-digit percentage increases in CPMs, a measure of the cost of reaching 1,000 viewers that is central in these annual discussions between TV networks and Madison Avenue. The higher increases are for NFL games, executives say, with other sports tucking in underneath the rates set for professional football.
Meanwhile, the rate increases for other types of programming are noticeably less. Networks have been able to notch deals for broadcast TV that call for CPMs that are flat with last year’s or up as much as 5% mid-single-digit percentage. Streaming inventory is in many cases going for CPMs that are flat with last year’s or down as much as 5%, according to the executives — and in some instances, more.
Advertisers and TV sales executives may be at an impasse over cable networks focused on entertainment. These networks are viewed with less enthusiasm in the age of streaming, because more consumers are abandoning their cable subscriptions in favor of streaming services. Media buyers have pressed for rollbacks in cable, and the media companies have resisted.
Their reasoning? New data added to Nielsen earlier this year has suggested that more people are watching cable than previously expected. With that as ballast, TV companies have refused to accept cable “rollbacks,” telling media buyers they will be happy to negotiate with them again later in the year in what is known in the so-called “scatter” market, when advertisers buy ad time much closer to when it needs to run.
No matter how they haggle, the media companies are fighting over a shrinking pile of money. Dollars committed to broadcast primetime in 2025 fell 2.5% to about $9.1 billion, according to Media Dynamics, an advertising consultancy, compared with $9.34 billion in the year-earlier period. Dollars committed to cable fell 4.3% to nearly $8.68 billion, compared with nearly $9.1 billion in 2024. Meanwhile, dollars earmarked for streaming rose 17.9%, Media Dynamics said, to $13.2 billion, compared with $11.2 billion in the 2024 upfront.
The companies are counting on sports to help them eke out something they can call a victory.
Disney has started to move Super Bowl commercial time in earnest, but only after a round of squawking that would have impressed Donald Duck.
After pressing advertisers to pony up $10 million for a 30-second spot as well as a $10 million “match” for other inventory tied to its 2027 broadcast of Super Bowl LXI, Disney has sold a significant chunk in deals that value half a minute in the Big Game at around $8 million, according to two people familiar with recent negotiations. Disney’s decision to agree to a lower price comes after intense pushback from advertisers and their representatives, according to three media buyers familiar with the matter, and suggests Madison Avenue will only pay so much for sports properties, no matter how popular they have become in the streaming era.
“We have seen strong early demand from emerging categories driving double digit units at $9 million each in addition to spending across Disney’s football portfolio,” Disney said in a statement. “Advertisers are leaning in early, recognizing the unmatched scale and cultural impact of the game with investment coming from seven major categories, led by A.I., finance, and pharma.”
Disney tried to set a floor at $9 million, according to media buyers, but those who bought more than 10 units at that price were largely “independents,” or advertisers new to the Super Bowl who do not enjoy a longer-term relationship with Disney or are represented by one of the U.S. advertising industry’s major media-buying agencies.
The company’s plans for the Super Bowl are ambitious. Disney’s rights deal with the NFL calls for the game to be telecast on both ABC and ESPN, with a separate “alterna-cast” led by Peyton and Eli Manning to appear on ESPN2. The telecast will take place on February 14, Valentine’s Day, and the Monday afterward is a federal holiday, President’s Day. Disney and the NFL may also have other ideas in store, according to two people familiar with the matter, that could include additional Super Bowl telecasts aimed at narrower audiences shown across other parts of the Disney media empire.
But the company’s plans for dealing with advertisers may have been equally driven. Disney’s ABC has not aired a Super Bowl since 2006, which means the company was able to contemplate a new process. Typically, the network airing a Super Bowl reaches out to what are known as “incumbents,” or advertisers who had positions in network’s previous Big Game telecast..The network hosting the Super Bowl typically gives these advertisers an early chance to buy in the next time it has the gridiron classic under its command. After offering them an opportunity, a network might also reach out to sponsors of the previous game.
Marketers who have multi-year deals with the NFL and often run commercials in the Super Bowl had begun to hear that they might not be able to have the usual positions they enjoyed in the ad lineup, according to media buyers, and made their outrage known. If Disney is going to award long-held positions to newer advertisers, says one media buying executive, “well, you’re going to get pushback from the marketplace.”
“There has been a bit of disarray,” says another media buyer.
Even so, one media buyer estimated Disney may have already sold at least 50% of its game-time inventory. Maybe Disney has gotten some of its ducks in a row.
