CW Sports to stream via ESPN in unique content pact
By Brian Steinberg
Approximately 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’s CW broadcast network will steam from a venue that
might be considered surprising: ESPN.
Under 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 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 its linear TV
outlets.
“Instead of standing up our own DTC product, we have a
built-in audience” 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. “The last thing the
world needs” is another stand-alone streaming outlet,” he
says., “People don’t want to subscribe to another platform.”
The pact between the two media companies hints at continuing
efforts to “bundle” content and services as consumers have a
dizzying array of subscription-based broadband outlets to
consider. ESPN’s parent company, Disney, offers a “bundle”
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.
The idea of melding CW’s sports content with ESPN’s
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.
“This gives a reason for fans of those sports to come to
ESPN,” says Dawson.
And the deal gives the CW ”accessibility for our consumers,
and incremental reach for our advertisers,” says Dan
Lanzano, president of national advertising sales for
Nexstar.
The CW becomes the latest in a very small number of third-
party offerings that have made their way under ESPN’s 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. And ESPN is now offering MLB.tv, a package of
out-of-market baseball games that are quite desirable for
die-hard fans.
“We think this is a real value add for our Unlimited
subscribers,” says Emily Horowitz, vice president of ESPN’s
direct to consumer strategy. Adding more content “makes that
product as attractive as we possibly can.”
CW was best known for young-audience-skewing programs like
“Gossip Girl” and “Arrow,” 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. “The
hardest thing to do and the most important thing to do,” he
says, is getting audiences to make habits of watching your
programming.
Separately, the CW Network and Roku unveiled a partnership
launching in Fall 2026 that will bring CW entertainment
programming to The Roku Channel for next-day streaming. CW
programs including “Policy 24/7,” “Scrabble” and “Trivial
Pursuit” as well as new installments of “WWE NXT” will be
made available via a CW-branded hub, which will also feature
more than 800 hours of CW library content
