Riverdale and faculty soccer are formally on the identical community—and main manufacturers are prepared for it.
Forward of The CW’s kickoff for its first season of ACC faculty soccer this weekend, that includes the Cincinnati Bearcats taking over the Pitt Panthers, the community landed main sponsors corresponding to Verizon, Subaru and Walmart.
For its newest reside sports activities enterprise, the Nexstar-owned community partnered with Verizon because the presenting sponsor for ACC soccer, and Subaru will sponsor halftime for the whole lot of the season.
The community has added greater than 15 new advertisers, pushed by sports activities, and likewise not too long ago signed Walmart because the season-long sponsor for the ACC Participant of the Recreation.
“All of those advertisers, people which have by no means aired on CW leisure, however your typical large sports activities gamers have made the transfer over to us with the ACC,” Todd Braverman, evp and head of nationwide gross sales for Nexstar Media Group/The CW, informed Adweek. “The response from our promoting companions and companies and shoppers has been unbelievable.”
In keeping with Braverman, the strongest classes embody QSR, pharmaceutical and telco.
“We’ve had little or no direct response,” mentioned Braverman, including that The CW has offered out all the fiscal third quarter video games with nationwide manufacturers. “We’ve had demand from the nationwide manufacturers to be a part of this.”
Soccer is only the start for The CW.
The community has already locked down a halftime sponsor for ACC basketball, and its sports activities offers have come collectively rapidly.
Although the CW has the unique broadcast rights to 50 ACC faculty soccer and basketball video games by way of the 2026-27 season—a convention that may quickly be joined by SMU, Cal and Stanford in 2024—the community solely landed the deal in July, a timeline that might normally exclude it from being offered as a part of this 12 months’s TV upfront.
“This got here quick and livid at us,” Braverman mentioned. “The profit we had was a slower shifting upfront. If this was a kind of faster shifting upfronts, the place all the things was executed by Memorial Day, we’d have been in a bit of little bit of hassle.”
The CW formally closed its upfront in August, seeing “mainly flat” greenback quantity and unit charges up mid-single digits. However the addition of reside sports activities has been a excessive level for the broadcaster, with gross sales “surprisingly excellent.”
