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By Andrew Marchand, Nicole Auerbach, Stewart Mandel and Chris Vannini
ESPN and the College Football Playoff are in agreement on a six-year, $7.8 billion extension that will make the network the home of the 12-team tournament through the 2031-32 season once CFP leaders sort out the specifics of how the postseason’s new era will operate, sources briefed on the deal told The Athletic.
The full contract’s completion is still contingent on CFP leaders finalizing details of the expanded format in the wake of the implosion of the Pac-12. The CFP’s management committee and board of managers have meetings scheduled for next week and continue to work through the complicated process of settling their outstanding issues. The ESPN deal will not be ratified until the commissioners and presidents vote on the structure and financials of the expanded CFP. ESPN senior vice president of communication Josh Krulewitz and College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock both declined to comment.
ESPN has two years remaining on its current deal, which carries an average payment of $608 million per year and includes the CFP semifinals and championship, plus the other four New Year’s Six bowl games. The six-year extension will cost $1.3 billion per year, the price at which an ESPN news story previously reported the network was discussing a new deal with the CFP.
Over the final two years of its current agreement, ESPN holds the rights to the new set of first-round games held at on-campus sites, in addition to the quarterfinals, semifinals and championship games. It is not yet known what the fee of the first-round games will be for the next two seasons. The quarterfinals will be played at the current New Year’s Six bowls, whose rights were already owned by ESPN. The percentage increase in rights fees from the current deal to the extension will be closer than the $608 million-to-$1.3 billion jump appears now, as the current contract’s average fails to include the pricing for the on-campus first-round games.
Over the course of the contract, ESPN will have the ability to sublicense games, meaning another network or digital player could air Playoff games, but it would be at Disney-owned ESPN’s discretion.
The deal would give ESPN control over nearly all Division I college sports championships, outside of the men’s basketball tournament, which is televised by CBS, TNT and their sister networks and platforms through 2032. In early January, ESPN and the NCAA announced a new eight-year, $920 million contract that gives the network the rights to 40 championships, including the women’s basketball tournament. That extension begins in September.
The CFP’s current contract with ESPN is set to run through the 2025-26 season, and any major changes to its terms require unanimous support.
After a four-person subcommittee recommended the new 12-team format in June 2021, it took more than two years of stop-and-start negotiations (amid conference realignment) to get the unanimous approval from the CFP board of managers, the group of presidents and chancellors who oversee the organization.
The board originally approved a model that includes the six highest-ranked conference champions and the six highest-ranked at-large teams. The impending departure of 10 teams from the Pac-12 has led to a push to tweak the model to five conference champions and seven at-larges.
The CFP management committee, which is made up of all 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, has recommended the 5+7 model, but the board of managers has not yet approved it. The board is expected to vote on it during a virtual meeting on Tuesday, per a source briefed on the process.
“Well, we’ve got two more years on a 12-year cycle and then an important conversation about the future,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told The Athletic last week. “We look at that independently. That’s not part of what we announced with the advisory group (with the Big Ten). We’re certainly interested in continuing the playoff, but there’s work to do.”
Outstanding issues still to be settled for the CFP’s new six-year contract include the ongoing discussions of future governance, revenue distribution and access. The commissioners are working through all three areas and are expected to discuss them at a meeting next week in Dallas, sources involved in the discussions said.
(Photo: Michael Wade / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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