Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

The Underdogs: The CW Is Emerging as a Sports Destination With College Football

20/09/2024

The Underdogs: The CW Is Emerging as a Sports Destination With College Football Partnered by Raycom Sports and Pac-12 Studios, The CW carries big-time ACC, Pac-12 football By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Friday, September 20, 2024 - 2:41 pm

Print This Story | Subscribe

Story Highlights

The CW. Yes, The CW.

Not very long ago, even the most dialed-in media-industry type would raise a single eyebrow at the concept of The CW, the Nexstar Media Group-owned broadcast network, as a player in the ultra-competitive world of live sports coverage.

In Week 3 of the college football season, The CW broadcast a marquee matchup between No. 5 Ole Miss and Wake Forest. The game was produced by Raycom Sports.

In little more than a year and a half, The CW has built itself quite the sports portfolio. Following its surprising acquisition of the television rights of LIV Golf in January 2023, the broadcaster has leveraged that momentum to add other enticing sports properties, including events in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and WWE's NXT, along with prized studio programming like Inside the NFL.

However, thanks to deals with the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Pac-12 Conference in football and men's and women's basketball, The CW has moved into a new sports-media bracket. This fall, the network is slated to broadcast 13 ACC and 11 Pac-12 football games (the latter featuring the conference's two remaining members, Oregon State and Washington State). Already this season, The CW has had some juicy matchups, such as when Top 5 Ole Miss visited the ACC's Wake Forest.

Football is the one sport in America's segmented media world where the viewers will find you. Be the place to be on a college-football Saturday, and you're quickly a destination. And, in a season of change in college football (conference realignment, the expanded playoff, NIL), the emergence of The CW as a destination of top-tier college football games may be one of the more interesting from a media perspective. It just may be the kindling that makes The CW's flame too bright to ignore.

Being involved in college football, the second-most-popular sport in our country, is just so valuable, says Jason Wormser, SVP, CW Sports, a longtime sports-media executive who has won seven national Sports Emmy Awards during his career with ESPN, NFL Network, and FOX Sports. There's a halo effect that comes off it and helps us introduce viewers to everything that we do.

What The CW does, in addition to its entertainment lineup, is produce more than 500 hours a year of live sports programming. That number appears destined to grow over the next few years - even beginning tonight: the start of a wall-to-wall sports weekend for The CW. The NASCAR Xfinity Series airs Friday evening, along with a Friday-night college football game between San Jose State and Washington State. All Saturday afternoon, the network will broadcast LIV Golf's final tournament of the year from Dallas before switching to a college-football doubleheader of TCU at SMU and Purdue at Oregon State. Sunday afternoon caps off the LIV tournament in Dallas.

This is the story not of a sports channel on the rise but of one that is already here.

What we are, if you think about it, is the underdog, notes Wormser. On NXT, all those folks want to be in WrestleMania. In college sports, they want to go to the next step, and they want to be professionals, whether it's the NFL, the NBA, or the WNBA. In LIV Golf, they're kind of the renegades. NASCAR Xfinity Series. You see, they're all the underdog, and we're the underdog, and we're working together. It all kind of fits. We're really excited. It's a thrilling time to be involved in something brand new. We can shape it the way we want to shape it.

Growth of a Sports Brand The story of The CW begins with its launch in 2008 as a broadcast- television replacement for the shuttered WB and UPN networks. When it was acquired by Nexstar in winter 2022, a noted shift in focus to live linear programming set the company on the course to stake its flag in live sports programming.

In January 2023, heads turned when The CW announced formation of CW Sports following its acquisition of the LIV Golf, thus winning a rights agreement intensely followed in the industry as the controversial brand searched for a television home. At around the same time, Wormser came on board as a consultant to help steer the network's newly ignited sports efforts. He brought with him decades of experience in production, perhaps most notably in soccer: he was coordinating producer on ESPN's coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup before playing a key role in FOX Sports' emergence in soccer with the UEFA Champions League, the Premier League, MLS, and more.

This season, The CW debuted its own graphics package and theme music for its live college-football broadcasts.

Since then, the operation has quickly but strategically grown - not just in programming but in staffing as well: CW Sports Executive Director Jonathan Biles joined from FOX Sports this past summer. The most critical step, however, was to find a production partner, and, following a rights deal with the ACC in summer 2023, The CW found one in an iconic brand in sports television: Raycom Sports.

Known for its legacy of college-sports production, Raycom Sports was a natural fit with its live-sports-production pedigree and in-house fleet of production trucks. With only five weeks to prepare for its first foray into college football, The CW quickly put together what it could. On games last season, The CW still used ESPN graphics and branding, looking to keep the look and feel familiar for viewers while working through its own brand look on the backend.

It was really important that we got off on the right foot with the [ACC] and got [off] on the
LINK: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2024/09/20/the-underdogs-how-the-cw-is-eme...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

01/06/2026

Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026

January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026 Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...

02/05/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Search, Faster Editing, and an AI-Ready Foundation for Modern Media

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

01/05/2026

NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to Integrate Dolby's Full Suite of Premium Picture and Sound Innovations

January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...

01/04/2026

DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION

January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Manifold to Demonstrate 400GbE COTS FPGA Support

Manifold Technologies, a Germany-based provider of cloud infrastructure for live broadcast production, will demonstrate support for 400GbE COTS FPGA accelerator...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Boland Communications Introduces QD-OLED Series Monitors

Boland Communications will introduce its QD4K315HDR10, a 31.5-inch QD-OLED monitor, at NAB Show 2026 (Booth C3519, April 18-22). The company is also introducing...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: PTZOptics to Showcase Move 4K and Horizon Platform

PTZOptics will demonstrate its Move 4K PTZ cameras and Horizon web-based control platform at NAB Show 2026 (Booth N1902). Move 4K with Horizon is now available...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Net Insight to Showcase Updated Nimbra Edge

Net Insight will demonstrate the next version of Nimbra Edge, its orchestration and control layer for live media services across multi-domain environments, at N...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Appear to Showcase Live Production Processing

Appear ASA will exhibit at NAB Show 2026 (Booth W1531, April 19-22, Las Vegas). The company completed an IPO in November 2025. Our customer-first approach is ...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Harmonic Announces New Live Sports Streaming Capabilities

Harmonic has announced new capabilities for its sports streaming platform, covering multiview, programmatic advertising, in-stream advertising, and content wate...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Ateme to Showcase GenAI, Agentic AI, and Streaming

Ateme (Booth W1723) will demonstrate broadcast, streaming, and AI-driven media workflow solutions at NAB Show 2026. GenAI and Agentic AI Ateme will demonstrat...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Bitmovin's Player Web X Adds Advertising Support, Vertical Video, and Proprietary ABR Algorithm

Bitmovin has announced new capabilities for Player Web X, its web video player, ...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Brazil's Minister of Communications and FCC Commissioner To Speak

The 2026 NAB Show (April 18-22, exhibits April 19-22, Las Vegas Convention Center) will host Brazil's Minister of Communications, Frederico de Siqueira Filh...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: EVS To Showcase Expanded Live Production Ecosystem

EVS will exhibit at NAB Show 2026 (Booth N1841), highlighting new products and updates across its live production portfolio, including the debut of T-Motion med...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Solid State Logic To Demonstrate Expanded Virtual System T Platform

Solid State Logic will demonstrate its virtualized System T platform at NAB Show 2026 (Booth C6907). Demonstrations will include the VTE1 virtual DSP engine, ne...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: Globecast To Showcase Managed Media Services Approach

Globecast will exhibit at NAB Show 2026 (Booth W3335), highlighting its hybrid service model spanning satellite, IP, fiber, and cloud. The company will demonst...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: IP Showcase Returns as IPMX Moves to Deployment

The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), and the Video Services Forum (VSF) have announced that the IP Showcase w...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: BBright To Demonstrate Single-Stream ST 2110 Playout

At NAB Show 2026 BBright will present a demonstration of its One Stream for the World concept, showing how a single ST 2110 playout stream can simultaneously ...

30/03/2026

NAB 2026: OpenDrives To Demonstrate New Storage and Edge Products

OpenDrives will demonstrate new products at NAB Show 2026, with two locations in the West Hall: a pod (W3443-E) in the Sports Business Hub and a cabana at W1158...

30/03/2026

Behind the Mic: Amazon Prime Hosts 90th Master Tournament With Host Terry Gannon

Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, including new deals, departures, and assignments compiled from press releases and repo...

30/03/2026

Op-Ed: Preparing for Agentic AI in Live Sports

The economics of live sports streaming have changed. New rights models, cloud production tools, and lower-cost distribution have made it possible for high schoo...

30/03/2026

Movimento Strings from Sonora Cinematic

MPE-capable chamber strings library announced Alongside their collection of Kontakt instruments, Sonora Cinematic have been steadily introducing a series of...

30/03/2026

UJAM release Groovemate Latigo

Latin-inspired percussion instrument announced Built on a newly developed engine and interface, UJAM's latest instrument has been designed to create Lat...

30/03/2026

Best Service launch Desert Winds

Latest Eduardo Tarilonte collaboration announced The latest library to join Best Service's ever-growing range includes four solo wind instruments that c...

30/03/2026

SOS Music Creators Survey 2026

We want to hear from you! Complete our SOS Quick Survey and enter the prize draw for a chance to win one of three $50 Amazon vouchers! Sound On Sound carri...

30/03/2026

Government of Canada Selects MAS for Strategic Tanker Fleet Sustainment

CC-330 Husky. 2024 Eric Desbiens Photography. Used with permission for the announcement and related communications. No residual rights....

30/03/2026

L3Harris Included in MDA Space Solution for RCN ISTAR Program

L3Harris Technologies will provide WESCAM CMX -8 sensor systems for integration on new Uncrewed Aircraft Systems from MDA Space, enhancing the Royal Canadian Na...

30/03/2026

EVS to Debut T-Motion Robotics at 2026 NAB Show

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/03/2026

SDVI To Feature New Rally Media Supply Chain Management Enhancements

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/03/2026

Boland Communications Introduces QD4K315HDR10 QD-OLED Series Monitors

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/03/2026

Mileto Tecnologia accelerates streaming growth with Synam...

Synamedia today announced that Mileto Tecnologia, one of Brazil's largest pay-TV operators, has chosen the Synamedia Go platform to support its rapid OTT ex...

30/03/2026

FOR-A's Software-Defined, AI-Powered Development Advances with Nippon TV and NVIDIA Technology

FOR-A's Software-Defined, AI-Powered Development Advances with Nippon TV and...

30/03/2026

Give Your Astrophotography REAL Depth - After Effects Tutorial

Give Your Astrophotography REAL Depth - After Effects Tutorial Graham Quince March 30, 2026 0 Comments In this tutorial, I talk you through the full w...

30/03/2026

Alfalite returns to NAB Show alongside FOR-A, showcasing LED solutions for broadcast and mission-critical environments

Alfalite returns to NAB Show alongside FOR-A, showcasing LED solutions for broad...

30/03/2026

WideOrbit Announces New Name, New Features for Flagship Radio Automation Software

Introducing WO Aurora WideOrbit is pleased to introduce WO Aurora, a new name fo...

30/03/2026

Sky announces changes to its Diversity Advisory Council

Sky welcomes Karen Blackett CBE to its DAC and thanks Baroness Prashar and Ndidi Okezie as they step down after five yearsMonday 30 March 2026 Sky announces ch...

30/03/2026

Netflix Announces the Reunion for Love is Blind: Sweden Season 3 - Premiering April 2

Back to All News Netflix Announces the Reunion for Love is Blind: Sweden Season...

30/03/2026

Netflix unveils new images from the second season of 'Gangs of Galicia'

Back to All News Netflix unveils new images from the second season of Gangs of Galicia Entertainment 30 March 2026 GlobalSpain Link copied to clipboard Do...

30/03/2026

The Latest on Netflix Anime, Unveiled at AnimeJapan 2026

Back to All News The Latest on Netflix Anime, Unveiled at AnimeJapan 2026 Entertainment 30 March 2026 GlobalJapan Link copied to clipboard From romance an...

30/03/2026

KBRO Leverages Harmonic's Fiber-on-Demand Solution for Network Upgrades

Leading Taiwan Broadband Operator Drives Fiber Deeper with Harmonic SAN JOSE, Calif. - March 30, 2026 - Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that KBRO, a lea...

30/03/2026

Top 10 Reasons Government Meetings Need Transcriptions (and Why It Matters More Than Ever)

Tyngsboro, Mass., March 30, 2026 - City councils, county commissions, school boa...

29/03/2026

Victory+ Turns to Creator Economy, Bringing In Popular Women's Sports Influencer Coach Jackie J to Host Live NWSL Alt-Cast

Cloud-based production, real-time engagement, and creator-driven storytelling ai...

28/03/2026

Harrison launch LiveTrax 3

Now features DiGiCo console integration Harrison's live recording and virtual soundcheck software has just reached its third major version, which among ...

28/03/2026

Sonora Cinematic launch Movimento Strings

MPE-capable chamber strings library announced Alongside their collection of Kontakt instruments, Sonora Cinematic have been steadily introducing a series of...

28/03/2026

Globecast Reimagines Managed Media Services for a Hybrid...

Globecast, the leading provider of broadcast, media and entertainment managed services, will showcase its reimagined approach to media operations at the 2026 NA...

28/03/2026

Fubo Inks Deals for More Baseball RSNs

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

27/03/2026

SVG GameDay, Ep. 9: Chicago Cubs' Chris Simonson - Flying the W at Wrigley Field

In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...

27/03/2026

Comcast Business Powers 2026 THE PLAYERS Championship Network and Broadcast Infrastructure

Comcast Business deployed network infrastructure for the 2026 PLAYERS Championsh...

27/03/2026

CS live Equips New OB Van With Riedel MediorNet, hi Control System, and Artist Intercom

Czech production company CS live has equipped its newest outside broadcast van w...