The sale of Univision this week to billionaire producer Haim Saban and a group of investors isn’t dampening the bright outlook for the ongoing $1.4 billion Spanish-language upfront, which is expected to wrap up by the end of July.

Univision, as well as the smaller Telemundo, are expected to see substantial gains over last year. Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen is forecasting that Univision will pull in some $1.11 billion in ad sales for the upcoming season, a 10 percent increase over last year's upfront market.

Cohen expects NBC Universal’s Telemundo to see its upfront sales increase by 25 percent, to $330 million. Overall, spending in the Spanish-language upfront is expected to be up 12.5 percent, to just under $1.45 billion. That includes TeleFutura and cable network Galavision, both owned by Univision, and other Spanish-language cable networks.

“The importance of the Hispanic marketplace to marketers grows as the population continues to grow,” says Teddy Hayes, vice president of media services at La Agencia de Orci in Los Angeles. “The growth, I think, is about existing advertisers spending more. But new advertisers are coming into the marketplace as their marketing teams recommend going into Hispanic media.”

David Joyce, an analyst with institutional investment firm Miller Tabak, is projecting a 10 percent increase for the Spanish-language upfront, to $1.4 billion.

But as Cohen's forecast suggests, it's Telemundo that has the momentum this upfront, more so than Univision, with the network’s primetime audience up 16 percent over last year, based on Nielsen Hispanic Television Index data for the broadcast season through late March compared to the full 2004-05 broadcast year. Telemundo’s average audience is now 1.1 million people.

Univision’s audience is down 2 percent, to just under 3.5 million viewers, while TeleFutura’s audience has tumbled 11 percent, to 522,000 people.

“You’ll see some share-shifting going on,” says Hayes. “It won’t be significant because Univision still has the largest [audience] share, but you will see that.”

Most media buyers say that newer networks like Fox Sports en Espanol and Azteca America are also doing well this upfront but with expenditures only a fraction of those spent on Spanish-language TV’s Big Two.

Meanwhile, the English-language networks, broadcast and cable, continue to lag. Buyers tell Media Life that network primetime negotiations were essentially wrapped up by Wednesday afternoon, after plodding along for weeks, with none of the networks posting significant increases.

Merrill Lynch’s Cohen last week revised down an earlier projection for the network upfront, from flat to down 1 percent, to about $9 billion.

Media buyers say negotiations in the cable TV and syndication upfronts have been slow to get underway, but a few deals have been locked in and several more will be by the July 4 weekend.