Armed with a new production studio in Connecticut and broadcast rights to this year’s Super Bowl, CBS Sports is making a push behind its 24-hour streaming channel, CBS Sports HQ.
Launched in February 2018, CBS Sports HQ is a free, ad-supported streaming channel available across desktops, mobile devices and connected TV screens. It’s the second free streaming video channel from CBS, following the launch of the news channel CBSN four years ago. (A third free streaming channel from CBS, ET Live, launched earlier this fall.) Sports HQ focuses on sports news and analysis — CBS Sports doesn’t stream any live sports or games such as the NFL or college football that it has the rights to. Similar to CBSN, the idea was to provide a news programming brand for viewers either cutting the cord or just spending more time watching long-form programming in over-the-top environments.
In October, CBS Sports opened a new 2,500-foot production studio in Stamford, Connecticut. It’s the second production studio dedicated fully to Sports HQ, joining an existing facility in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“It’s a major investment and major undertaking for CBS,” said Jeff Gerttula, evp and gm of CBS Sports Digital. “We now split daily operations of Sports HQ between Stamford and Fort Lauderdale. It’s going to help us scale better and continue pushing forward in doing bigger productions around major events.”
This includes the Super Bowl, which CBS is broadcasting in February. CBS Sports will be sending a crew to Atlanta to produce daily live and on-demand programming for Sports HQ. Instead of debates and “hot takes,” Sports HQ will focus on providing deeper analysis of the game and various match-ups.
“We’re going to have an extensive on-site presence in Atlanta leading into the Super Bowl,” said Gerttula. “One of the reasons we have the Super Bowl is to build out new franchises and new products — of which this is one. We’re also live streaming the Super Bowl, so our goal is to also figure out how we can take that [live-streaming] audience and expose it to Sports HQ. If you don’t see [Sports HQ] on Super Bowl Sunday, I’m not doing my job.”
