• Mediaweek, Sunday, July 19, 2009 9:39 PM

TV sports, including the once-invulnerable National Football League, have lost much of their instant draw. Sports media buyers say they are no longer blindly paying cost-per-thousand prices at the levels they have in the past. Buyers face pressure from their clients to get better deals and see opportunity in the softness of the financial and auto markets.

"We are going to be more aggressive in bringing pricing back to more realistic levels," says one sports buyer. "If we can't do sports upfront deals, we'll take our chances in scatter, particularly with the NFL." The stalled upfront has hamstrung football-carrying networks from selling because pricing for NFL ad inventory is primarily predicated on rates the networks get for their prime-time entertainment.

Most of the networks that carry NFL games say they are about one-third sold out for regular-season advertising. But most of that is due to multiyear deals and long-term sponsorships already in place. The last time NFL games on the TV networks sold at negative CPM rates from the year prior was 2000. "We have our work cut out for us," says a network sports sales exec.

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