NWSL 2020

From A&E to CBS and Twitch

In early 2017, the league signed a three-year equity partnership with A&E, which observers of the league believed would help it reach its young, female fans.  A&E agreed to broadcast 22 live games on its Lifetime Network on Saturdays, including pre- and post-game shows. The partnership with A&E ended in early 2019, one year short of their three-year agreement. Shortly before the USWNT won the World Cup that summer, the NWSL reached a broadcast agreement with ESPN. The cable sports network aired 14 games during the remainder of the 2019 season. The matches appeared on ESPN2 and ESPNews and featured some of the biggest names from the World Cup tournament.

CBS had been talking to the NWSL informally for a couple of years. When the league's partnership with A&E ended, discussions of a deal between the two became more formal. On March 11, 2020 the league signed a new deal with CBS, marking the first time a U.S. broadcast network would show women's professional soccer games live. CBS reportedly would pay $4.5 million over three years for the broadcast rights. As Dan Weinberg, executive vice president for programming at CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network, noted, CBS considered the NWSL the perfect partner. Describing what CBS saw in the NWSL and its players, Weinberg said, "They're on the rise. They have some of the best soccer players in the world, male or female.... It's a spring and summer sport, where we have a little more open real estate in our schedule. The audience is very loyal. The audience is growing, young, diverse, female. So no surprise, it fits well". At the same time it signed a deal with CBS, the NWSL also entered into an agreement with Twitch to livestream games internationally. Twitch was reportedly paying the NWSL $3.75 million over three seasons.

Callback before_footer in local_aigrade component should be migrated to new hook callback for core\hook\output\before_footer_html_generation
  • line 7225 of /lib/moodlelib.php: call to debugging()
  • line 7292 of /lib/moodlelib.php: call to {closure}()
  • line 71 of /lib/classes/hook/output/before_footer_html_generation.php: call to get_plugins_with_function()
  • line 987 of /lib/classes/output/core_renderer.php: call to core\hook\output\before_footer_html_generation->process_legacy_callbacks()
  • line 154 of /mod/book/view.php: call to core\output\core_renderer->footer()