We’re pleased State Farm is back as our title sponsor, and sales for the games have been strong. We’re also creating new opportunities for advertisers by introducing dedicated studio shows this year. Our commitment to women sports through the WNBA and NWSL featured prominently in our network’s recent upfront presentations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Our team set a whole new tone this year, punctuated by a more aggressive, chest-forward sales and marketing approach. Now, looking ahead on political advertising revenue, our second area of focus, we’re pleased to raise our guide for the year after seeing Senate races heat up in Montana and Ohio, and Florida placed abortion on its ballot. Our new guide of $240 million to $270 million now includes the impact of the Florida ballot measure.
Arizona is likely also to add a similar high-spend referendum to the ballot. And that issue gets – if that issue gets cleared onto the ballots in the Scripps states of Colorado, Missouri, Montana and Nevada, we could see even more upside in our political revenue performance. The presidential election typically makes up about 20% of our total. And while we’re seeing less spending there than we have traditionally, we do expect to benefit in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin. And we’re seeing strong political spending in Montana and Ohio, where Republican Senate candidates and their packs are looking to unseat long-time incumbent Democrats. These are two states where Scripps has a big footprint. While most of the political revenue will come in the third and fourth quarters, we now have enough visibility to confidently say that we expect to exit the first half of this year having generated more political revenue than we did during the first half of 2020.
Our third area of focus is prudent expense management. While I’m optimistic we are beginning to see some rebound in advertising on the top line, we will also continue to pursue generating higher EBITDA through expense management. This ongoing expense management is above and beyond the $40 million in savings we are realizing from the reorganization of the company we initiated last year. Finally, another important deleveraging and debt-reduction strategy is realizing a strong return on our investment from assets we have acquired. We announced in mid-April that a process was underway to explore the sale of the Bounce TV network prompted by increasingly strong inbound interest from qualified potential buyers. Selling Bounce is entirely consistent with Scripps’ long history of buying and creating businesses, growing the assets’ value and then divesting at the right time for a strong ROI.
In recent years, examples of this includes our sale of podcasting businesses, Stitcher and Midroll and digital audio business, Triton. Since acquiring Bounce in 2017 as part of the Katz Networks, we have significantly increased the audience, doubled the revenue and increased its profit contribution. Under our stewardship, Bounce has become a more important brand in the Black communities, an entertainment outlet that tells the complete story of the Black American experience, from original shows like Johnson to beloved musical – to beloved movies and syndicated programming. We want to make sure Bounce is in a position for that to grow, and we anticipate that new owners could unlock even more value. We expect to have an update on that process for you later this summer.
Adding to the opportunity to generate proceeds to delever, we are also exploring the sale of some smaller, non-strategic real estate assets. Scripps has been here serving American audiences and advertisers for more than 145 years. There are many reasons for the company’s longevity and track record of success, creating value in the dynamic media landscape time and time again, from our clarity of mission and our values to our risk tolerance and willingness to focus on the long-term. But especially salient today is the long-held view inside Scripps that businesses operate in seasons. Today, during the season we’re in right now, our management team is focused on executing against the plan I’ve shared with you, that will lead us to pay down debt and improve the balance sheet for the benefit of our company, our employees, our mission and the partnership we have with shareholders that creates value.
And now Kevin, we’re ready for your questions.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And we’ll go to the line of Dan Kurnos, Benchmark. Please go ahead.
Dan Kurnos: Adam, I know you said you’ll update us this summer. Is there any way to get metrics around Bounce? I mean we know kind of directionally from when you bought it, part of Katz a while ago, but just curious if you can help us think about that and/or the real estate just sizing-wise.
Adam Symson: Yes. I mean look, the inbound interest that we’ve had has been strong. It was strong before the news of the sale process went public, and it’s really only gotten more robust. I have a lot of confidence that we’ll identify the right next home for the network, and I expect it to be an excellent return for shareholders. Obviously, a deleveraging event with proceeds used to pay down debt and a very good outcome for the company. Relative to metrics, I think there have been some press reports out there that we would expect proceeds to be in the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Relative to the asset sales, I would think those are a lot less material than the sale of Bounce. We’ve also said in the past that we’re sort of always in the process of optimizing our portfolio and would certainly be open to looking at other assets as well.
Dan Kurnos: Perfect. And then just maybe to touch on your expense comments. It sounds like you have identified line of sight on more costs. I guess either for you or Jason, probably early to size those. But just kind of curious how you’re thinking about how much leverage you still have on the bottom line on the cost side.
