ESPN, College Football Playoff Agree to Six-Year Extension; Disney to Control All CFP Games Through 2032
ESPN would have the ability to sublicense games to other outlets as part of the agreement.
Since its introduction in the 2014 season, the College Football Playoff has lived exclusively on ESPN. Now, despite the forthcoming expansion from four to 12 teams, it appears that the worldwide leader will at least have the opportunity to continue that tradition for the next eight years. The Athletic is reporting that Disney and the CFP have reached a six-year extension of their current CFP rights deal that totals $1.3 billion per season. This deal was initially reported — by ESPN — in January. Since the two sides have two years remaining on their current agreement, that means that ESPN will control the rights to all playoff games through the 2031-32 season.
Key Points:
- ESPN has been the only home of CFP games since their introduction in 2014.
- The six-year extension will cost Disney $7.8 billion in total.
- With the new Disney, Fox, and WBD sports streaming joint venture, Fox could end up hosting some CFP games as well.
The College Football playoff is set to expand from its original four-team format to a new 12-team format beginning with this fall’s season. ESPN’s deal for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons already included the semifinals and championship games and gave them the option to also secure the rights to the newly created first-round games, which will take place at the home fields of the higher-seeded teams. It has not been determined what ESPN will pay for the rights to the eight first-round games over the next two seasons.
Since the quarterfinals of the expanded CFP will take place in existing bowl games that ESPN already owns the right to, the rights for those games are not a part of this new contract. The contract extension will not become official until it is approved by the College Football Playoff Board of Managers, made up of conference commissioners and university presidents, votes on the expanded CFP’s final details.
How Does the New EXPN, Fox, WBD Joint Venture Impact the College Football Playoff Rights?
This newly reported contract extension is scheduled to kick in following the completion of the 2026 National Championship Game. Over the subsequent six years of the deal, ESPN will reportedly pay a total of $7.8 billion for the games but does maintain the ability to sublicense some of the contests to other outlets. Given the newly announced joint venture between Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, it would not be a shock if Fox ends up securing the rights to a handful of CFP games, since Disney would receive payment for the games and would still tangentially (if not financially) benefit from their presence on the streamer.
While the three media companies involved in the JV each own equal thirds of the service, they will respectively collect revenue that correlates to the content that they bring to the platform. So while Fox would receive payouts connected to any CFP games that it sublicenses from ESPN, the company would still have to pay for those rights. So Disney would collect the check from Fox without having to give the games over to a network completely unassociated with its business objectives.
Not too long ago, Fox was considered one of the major contenders to land a portion of the expanded CFP. However, if the company’s partnership with Disney effectively kept them out the race for those game, removing a competing bidder from the process, that would mean that would at least partially explain why the CFP rights fees ended up being far lower than initially anticipated. CFP executives had originally floated the idea that the expanded rights would fetch $2 billion per season, however at $1.3B, they fell far short of that goal.
With NBC seemingly focused on spending for NBA games, and Amazon and Apple apparently not being the significant contenders they were believed to be, only CBS was left in the mix. Given Paramount Global's current financial issues, the Eye Network was likely never truly a candidate to secure the rights.
So, even if the revenue from the joint venture is distributed based on content supplied, with Disney and Fox in business together, the two conglomerates appear to have helped each other out by keeping the rights fees at a relatively reasonable rate.
Is the College Football Playoff Expansion Another Way for ESPN to Bulk Up for Its Standalone Streamer?
While the revelation that Disney would be teaming with two sports broadcasting rivals to form a completely new streaming sports service certainly changes the calculus in terms of sports rights and distribution, the bigger factor in Disney being willing to pony up nearly $8 billion might be a little closer to home. Just days after the collaborative joint venture was announced, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that the long-gestating ESPN standalone sports streaming service would launch in the fall of 2025, perhaps as early as August of next year.
ESPN has dubbed itself the worldwide leader in sports for a reason. The amount of sports content that the family of networks hosts is unrivaled, but for Disney to make a move to bundle all of its streaming and linear content into a single streaming service, the company will need to make sure that it gives people reasons enough to opt for its platform over competing cable, satellite, and live TV streaming options.
That is one reason why last week, The Streamable entertained the idea that ESPN might move a future Super Bowl to streaming only. While that is unlikely, given thehistoric ratings that linear channels still get for the Big Game, being able to exclusively offer major sporting events like the CFP will be a necessity for Disney to maintain its dominance in the sports broadcasting space. ESPN still needs to satisfy its traditional pay-TV partners in order to keep their very profitable carriage fees high, but Disney also has an eye toward the future.
As more and more consumers opt to stream their sports content instead of paying for traditional subscriptions, ESPN is looking to further position itself as the go-to, must-have home for live sports. Whether that is through its collaborative joint venture with Fox and WBD, or on its in-house mega-streamer doesn’t necessarily matter, as long as ESPN is at the center of consumers’ sports media consumption habits.
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