Will ESPN’s New College Football Playoff Deal Mean Streaming-Exclusive CFP Games?
ESPN has extended its deal with the CFP until 2032, and streaming-exclusive games from the expanded slate of playoff games seem highly likely.
Reports of ESPN’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. There’s no doubt that cord cutting has eaten into the ESPN audience, but ESPN is still the worldwide leader in sports. It proved that anew this week, as it officially announced a six-year extension with the College Football Playoff (CFP) as that organization prepares to expand its inventory of teams from four to 12 in the upcoming season. That will mean a large boost in the amount of games ESPN can air or sublicense to other media outlets, and it’s likely to lead to a streaming-only CFP game at some point in the near future.
- The NFL has proven that streaming-only playoff games can be successful in generating a large audience.
- ESPN is launching two new streaming platforms in the near future; a joint venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, and a streamer of its own.
- The inventory of CFP games will expand to 11 when extra teams are added to the mix.
Why ESPN is Likely to Offer a Streaming-Only CFP Game Soon
Not only are there more games coming to the CFP, there will soon be more streaming services for ESPN to put them on. To start with, ESPN is joining its sports rights with those of Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery on a new joint venture streaming platform that will launch this fall. On top of that, ESPN is creating a new streaming platform of its own to offer as many sports from its linear channels as possible — and maybe livestreams of those channels themselves — for launch by 2025. That’s before even mentioning the channel’s current streamer ESPN+, which may nor may not survive the creation of two additional streaming services by ESPN.
The amount of games available is also set to rise dramatically in 2024. Last year was the final edition of the four-team CFP, and this fall the number of teams triples to 12. There will be 11 CFP games each season there’s a 12-team format, and it’s likely that ESPN will see an opportunity to place one of the first round games exclusively on one of its streamers. Under the expanded CFP format, the top four seeds will get byes in the first round, and linear ratings for these games are likely to be lower than games featuring higher-seeded teams. That gives ESPN more incentive to try putting them exclusively on one of its streamers.
ESPN will have both the means and the opportunity to offer CFP games exclusively via streaming, so the only thing missing is the will to do so. But launching two new streaming services will mean ESPN needs subscribers, and the best way to attract them initially is by offering exclusive, marquee events that fans won’t be able to find elsewhere. A streaming-exclusive CFP game would certainly qualify.
What Can ESPN and the CFP Learn From the NFL?
The NFL tried its hand at a streaming-exclusive playoff game for the first time in 2023, and all the data made public by the league and its streaming partner Peacock indicate that the experiment was a success. NBC claimed the game was the most-streamed live event in the history of…well, history, averaging 23 million viewers. The game — a Wild Card contest between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins — also drove more subscriber sign-ups than any event in streaming history.
That success is still highly unlikely to lead to a streaming-only Super Bowl any time in the near future, but it offers several encouraging signs for ESPN if it does decide to make one CFP game a streaming exclusive. It should serve to allay the fears of any ESPN executives who are leery about the audience size such a game would draw, and should also prove encouraging in terms of how many new subscribers the streamer could expect to acquire ahead of the game.
From The Streamable’s perspective, it appears eminently likely that ESPN will offer a streaming-exclusive College Football Playoff game sometime between now and 2032, when its contract with the CFP expires. Like the Super Bowl, the National Championship will probably remain too big of a ratings draw to put it only on a streaming platform, but first round games and perhaps even quarterfinal matchups are excellent candidates to become streaming exclusives once ESPN launches its JV streamer, as well as a new service of its own.
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