The CW looking to add more bowl games, per report

As The CW continues to pick off more live sports rights, the network is reportedly looking to expand its college football footprint.

According to Ryan Glasspiegel in Front Office Sports, The CW wants to add more bowl games to its portfolio given the success college football has seen on the network in recent years.

“Based on the success of the bowl season last year and the Arizona Bowl, we’re taking a look to add to those to potentially add to our college landscape,” The CW’s SVP of Sports Mike Perman told FOS.

Currently, the network airs a package of ACC football games, much of the new-age Pac-12 inventory featuring Oregon State and Washington State, and the aforementioned Arizona Bowl the last two seasons. It’s unclear, however, exactly which bowl games The CW would be targeting. ESPN Events owns, operates, and broadcasts the vast majority of college football’s bowl season, leaving few opportunities for other networks to air bowl games themselves.

Nevertheless, sports continues to be a massive initiative for the Nexstar-owned broadcast network. Outside of college football, The CW airs ACC basketball, WWE’s NXT, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Grand Slam Track, AVP Beach Volleyball, and recently agreed to a deal with the PBA.

“There’s excitement that it’s all working the way that we thought it would,” The CW president Brad Schwartz told FOS. “We assumed when we started doing it that our local stations would absolutely love getting live sports, which you don’t DVR. We assumed that adding sports would bring new people to the network, and lead into whatever comes after it—shows that maybe you’d [otherwise] DVR.”

In total, since The CW began airing live sports in 2023, 40 million people have tuned in for a sports broadcast. The network has also notched five consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth. Clearly, the strategy is working.

“That’s kind of what sports does,” Schwartz said. “Our affiliates and local stations are thrilled—especially when they get events that are in their local markets. Nobody has mass reach better than broadcast networks. Nobody has mass reach better than sports. You put the two together, and it’s the best combo”.