The upfront market is nearly done, as sports acts as both negotiation driver and obstacle

The upfront marketplace, long in the making this year, is nearing completion, as the major holding companies and larger independent agencies wrap their negotiations with the biggest of the sellers from traditional media giants to the major streaming services. All that’s left to do is to finalize packages with any traditional media firms that don’t have some digital or streaming element, which includes mostly cable networks not owned by the aforementioned traditional media giants. “From a partner perspective, we still have a lot of the long tail to go, but for the most part, most of our priority partner deals have been completed,” said one…

This is a curated summary. The full story was reported by Digiday.