The CW has entered a four-year strategic partnership with ESPN to stream over 800 hours of its sports content on the ESPN app's Unlimited tier, beginning this summer. This deal provides a streaming outlet for CW Sports content, including NASCAR, ACC, and WWE NXT events, which previously lacked a dedicated digital home. The CW will retain all advertising sales rights for its sports content on the ESPN app.
The immediate result is that CW Sports finally gets a digital home inside a major sports app instead of operating without a streaming outlet since 2023. That matters for distribution and for sales talks: Mike Perman said it removes a recurring “what’s your digital business like?” question, while Brad Schwartz said The CW avoided launching another DTC app. The ESPN side gets more inventory for Unlimited, including ACC football and newer rights like NASCAR and PBR. Watch whether the promised CW Sports destination appears in the ESPN app this summer and how the first year’s linear passthrough gives way to dynamic ad insertion.
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