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
Most recent headlines
23/12/2025
How guilas Cibae as Dominican Winter League Games Are Locally Produced for Glob...
23/12/2025
BitFire's Jim Akimchuk on Supplying Scalability and Customization in the Clo...
23/12/2025
CAMB.AI Enables European Athletics to Offer Multi-Language SupportPlan is to eventually offer translation into all languages spoken in EuropeBy Ken Kerschbaumer...
23/12/2025
Analysis: As sports media values trend negative, scarcity and quality are king By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Monday, December 22, 2025 - 14:08
Print ...
23/12/2025
ESPN, Disney, and NBA Return to the Animated Altcast Fray With Second Edition of...
23/12/2025
End the Year on a High Note and Donate to the Sports Broadcasting Fund Today! By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, December 23, 2025 - 12:25 pm
...
23/12/2025
The year is winding down, the weather outside is frightful, and it's the perfect time to escape into a story that warms the heart. For listeners looking for...
23/12/2025
A Zeus motor is hot fire tested at L3Harris' Camden, Arkansas, solid rocket ...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Lightware will exhibit several major product innovations at ISE 2026, including the new USB-C BOOSTER-V1, Google Meet. integration for various Taurus UCX models...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
23/12/2025
Experience the power of WO Automation for Radio's newest service, the System Effectiveness Review. Designed to help you achieve more, a System Effectiveness...
23/12/2025
23 Dec 2025
VEON's Beeline Kazakhstan and Rakuten Symphony Collaborate to A...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
How Steamy Can It Get? Single's Inferno' Season 5 Pre...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
33 Million Global Viewers on Netflix Watched Jake Paul vs. Ant...
23/12/2025
New technique lights up where drugs go in the body, cell by cell Scripps Research scientists developed a technique that maps drug binding in individual cells th...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
21/12/2025
John Shortt named Young Sportsperson of the Year Kerry are the Team of the Year
...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
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 
