ESPN and The CW announced a new streaming partnership.
ESPN announced Wednesday that CW Sports events will be streamed exclusively live in the ESPN App for all ESPN Unlimited plan subscribers. This includes WWE NXT, along with college football and college basketball from the ACC, Pac-12, and Mountain West, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, and other leagues like PBR Bull Riding.
The partnership came a day after it was announced that NXT premium live events would move to The CW this summer.
A CW rep tells POST Wrestling, “NXT archives, including PLEs, will live on ESPN Unlimited for 30 days. Past NXT archives will still be available on The CW App and now Roku, as well as our NXT fast channel”.
It is also a continuation of ESPN’s relationship with The CW, which secured its ACC inventory through a sublicense agreement with ESPN in 2023, covering 50 combined football and basketball games each season.
In general, viewership data for events on the ESPN App isn’t publicly available. NXT has been averaging 612,000 viewers and 0.09 in the 18-49 demographic on Tuesday nights this year.
