After broadcasting Inside the NFL for the last two seasons, The CW has reportedly decided not to renew the program heading into the 2025 campaign. The studio program, which features highlights from the previous week and analysis on the action, is said to have culminated its run on the network after featuring Ryan Clark, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, Chris Long and Bill Belichick last season. John Ourand of Puck was the first to report the news about the show, and he articulated that while an announcement is not imminent, the league has had conversations “with several interested parties.”
In addition to trying to find a new home for Inside the NFL, Ourand also divulged that the league is in discussions regarding rights to the NFL Draft starting next year. ESPN has been the broadcast home of the annual event since 1980, witnessing its evolution from Radio City Music Hall to cities across the country garnering hundreds of thousands of fans. The NFL is also speaking with ESPN about an arrangement regarding NFL Media, something that has been reported previously as potentially including the league taking a minority equity stake in the sports media company.
Before airing on The CW for the last two seasons, Inside the NFL spent the previous two years on Paramount+ following a 13-year run with Showtime. The program first started on HBO in 1977 where it remained for just over three decades featuring longtime cast members Len Dawson, Nick Buoniconti and James Brown. Despite its track record, Ourand acknowledged that “the market for this kind of studio show is tight” considering sports networks produce a significant amount of NFL content in the fall.
In the years of airing Inside the NFL, The CW has made a push into live sports rights featuring programming from entities such as the WNBA, NASCAR Xfinity Series, WWE NXT and college football emanating from the Atlantic Coast Conference and Pac-12 Conference. Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports reported that the network is looking to air additional bowl games after televising the Arizona Bowl for the last two seasons. Nexstar, which owns The CW Network, reported net revenue of $1.23 billion and an adjusted EBITDA of $381 million last quarter, the latter of which is representative of a 17% year-over-year decline.
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