If ESPN ultimately wants to become a centralized hub for all live sports, regardless of network affiliation, it will attempt to strike more deals like this one.
On Wednesday, ESPN announced a partnership with The CW to bring all of The CW’s live sports to the ESPN app as part of an ESPN Unlimited subscription. The deal will allow ESPN app users to stream The CW’s live sports programming — which includes college football and college basketball from the ACC, Pac-12, and Mountain West, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, WWE NXT, and other niche leagues — directly within ESPN’s multiplatform app interface.
Prior to the deal, the only place to stream live sports from The CW was on the network’s own app. It’s unclear if those capabilities will remain; however, all live sporting events will still be available through traditional means on The CW’s over-the-air broadcast network.
“This agreement gives fans even more live sports to watch year-round within the ESPN Unlimited plan, while extending the reach of CW Sports to new audiences,” ESPN programming executive Rosalyn Durant said in a press release. “As we continue to evolve ESPN’s direct-to-consumer experience, collaborations like this allow us to better serve fans by making more of the sports they love available in one place.”
This is not the first time ESPN and The CW have partnered on a deal. The CW secured its ACC inventory through a sublicense agreement with ESPN back in 2023 that includes 50 combined football and basketball games each season.
ESPN has identified fragmentation within live sports as a growing pain point for consumers, and the network has expressed interest in being part of the solution to that problem. Ideally, ESPN would like to be the hub of all live sports streaming in the future. At least, that’s what the company was saying several years ago.
Of course, that’s easier said than done when that goal requires competitors to fork over valuable programming to ESPN-owned platforms. A deal like this might make sense for a network like The CW, which doesn’t have a major streaming presence, but seems borderline inconceivable for a network like NBC, which is trying to grow Peacock through a sports-heavy strategy. Not to mention, ESPN will soon integrate its own streaming-exclusive content onto other platforms like YouTube TV.
Still, partnerships like this one with The CW are small but welcome steps that help reduce friction for sports fans.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.