ESPN locks down College Football Playoff rights

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ESPN reached a $7.8 billion deal to ensure it retains exclusive rights of the highly popular College Football Playoff (CFP) through the 2031-32 season.

Running 2026-27 to 2031-32 the package has Disney paying $1.3 billion annually and builds on the existing 12-year deal which concludes at the end of the 2025-26 season. It includes an amended two-year agreement starting 2024-25 accommodating the expanded CFP format of four new First Round games per year as well as CFP National Championship rights in a new 12-team playoff that will launch this Fall. All rounds of the expanded playoff and all ancillary programming connected to the playoff, such as the CFP Selection Show, are included in the package. The extension gives ESPN the right to sublicense a select number of games.

Broadcast of the national championship game will move to ABC starting with the 2026 season, in addition to ESPN's MegaCast, but the new agreement includes "expansive rights to simulcast or MegaCast CFP games across all Walt Disney Company platforms, including [Disney’s] Direct-to-Consumer offerings," according to a release.

The CFP’s previous deal with ESPN, which included the rights to only three playoff games per season and four marquee bowl games, was worth $470 million annually.

There was speculation that the CFP wanted to split the rights for the expanded tournament across multiple broadcast partners, with Fox mentioned as potential suitor.

Media consultant and former Fox Sports SVP Programming, Research & Content Strategy, Patrick Crakes said he was not surprised ESPN ended up as the sole rights holder, especially with big tech rivals Apple and Amazon still cautious about entering the live sports market.

“The reason why the expectations aren't getting met is because the economics and ability to monetize these large, tier one properties, it's just becoming impossible to do it, unless you're already heavily invested in it,” he told the Associated Press.

Disney has committed $9 billion this year alone to spend on sports assets, as it also preps to land both an ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery joint venture-backed sports streamer and potentially a standalone ESPN DTC platform in the market.

In January it inked a eight year $115 million a year (totalling $920 million) with more NCAA properties including women’s basketball and women’s volleyball for carriage on ESPN. It is spending $2.7 billion a season on NFL, including Monday Night Football and is currently in talks with the NBA to renew its rights package, which expires in 2025 and for which it currently pays $1.4 billion per year.

College Football is a prized asset for ESPN has been its exclusive home since the league’s inception in 2015. Games on ESPN accounts for the top 15 and more than 50 of the top 100 most-watched cable programs on record (since 1987), with 8 of the top 10 directly from CFP Semifinals or National Championship games. In 2023-24, ESPN’s expansive coverage of the CFP delivered a record year during which the CFP National Championship and New Year’s Six averaged 15.1 million viewers, the best audience in five years and fifth highest in the 10-year history of the CFP.

"ESPN has worked very closely with the College Football Playoff over the past decade to build one of the most prominent events in American sports," said ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro in a statement. "We look forward to enhancing our valued relationship over the next two years, and then continuing it for six more as we embark on this new, expanded playoff era.”