{"id":613407,"date":"2026-04-29T14:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T14:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/613407\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T14:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T14:14:13","slug":"cw-sports-to-stream-via-espn-in-unique-content-pact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/613407\/","title":{"rendered":"CW Sports to Stream Via ESPN in Unique Content Pact"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tApproximately 800 hours of college football and basketball, professional bull riding, WWE action, NASCAR races, PBA bowling and professional volleyball that air each year on Nexstar\u2019s CW broadcast network will steam from a venue that might be considered surprising: ESPN<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder a deal announced Wednesday, ESPN will reap the extra hours of activity and the audience that comes to its direct-to-consumer subscription service with the new sports inventory, while the CW<\/a> will oversee sales of ad revenue tied to those games. The CW matches will only stream at ESPN, and will not be made available on the linear TV outlets of the sports-media behemoth.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cInstead of standing up our own DTC product, we have a built-in audience\u201d at ESPN, said Brad Schwartz, president of The CW, during a recent interview, addressing growing concerns about the ongoing fragmentation of sports properties across streaming venues. \u201cThe last thing the world needs\u201d is another stand-alone streaming outlet,\u201d he says., \u201cPeople don\u2019t want to subscribe to another platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pact between the two media companies hints at continuing efforts to \u201cbundle\u201d content and services as consumers have a dizzying array of subscription-based broadband outlets to consider. ESPN\u2019s parent company, Disney, offers a \u201cbundle\u201d of all its owned streaming services, and Disney and Fox Corp. offer a bundle of ESPN and the new Fox One streaming outlet, both of which focus heavily on sports. Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery offer a bundle comprised of Disney+, Hulu and HBO Max.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe idea of melding CW\u2019s sports content with ESPN\u2019s streaming service came about as Schwartz spoke regularly with Nick Dawson, who oversees college sports programming and acquisitions at ESPN. CW has access to ACC games that ESPN does not, even though ESPN operates a stand-alone outlet devoted to ACC sports. CW also has access to Mountain West and Pac-12 games and WWE content that ESPN does not. ESPN currently does not have a major rights deal with NASCAR or Professional Bull Riders. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis gives a reason for fans of those sports to come to ESPN,\u201d says Dawson.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd the deal gives the CW \u201d accessibility for our consumers, and incremental reach for our advertisers,\u201d says Dan Lanzano, president of national advertising sales for Nexstar.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe CW becomes the latest in a very small number of third-party offerings that have made their way under ESPN\u2019s aegis. ESPN can now offer NFL Network and NFL RedZone thanks to a recent pact that gave the NFL a 10% stake in the sports-media giant<\/a>. And ESPN is now offering MLB.tv, <\/a>a package of out-of-market baseball games that are quite desirable for die-hard fans.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe think this is a real value add for our Unlimited subscribers,\u201d says Emily Horowitz, vice president of ESPN\u2019s direct to consumer strategy. Adding more content \u201cmakes that product as attractive as we possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCW was best known for young-audience-skewing programs like \u201cGossip Girl\u201d and \u201cArrow,\u201d but has, since Nexstar purchased the bulk of its ownership, built up a portfolio of sports programming that Schwartz says has proven attractive to audiences. The executive says 28% of people who watch CW primetime offerings during the week are now also watching sports on the weekend, up from 21% in the prior year. \u201cThe hardest thing to do and the most important thing to do,\u201d he says, is getting audiences to make habits of watching your programming.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeparately, the CW Network and Roku<\/a> unveiled a partnership launching in Fall 2026 that will bring CW entertainment programming to The Roku Channel for next-day streaming. CW programs including \u201cPolicy 24\/7,\u201d \u201cScrabble\u201d and \u201cTrivial Pursuit\u201d as well as new installments of \u201cWWE NXT\u201d will be made available via a CW-branded hub, which will also feature more than 800 hours of CW library content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Approximately 800 hours of college football and basketball, professional bull riding, WWE action, NASCAR races, PBA bowling and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,352,5732,2780,92],"class_list":["post-613407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-espn","tag-roku","tag-the-cw","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}