This year’s college football championship game between Michigan and Washington will mark the final time fans see just four teams in the college football playoff (CFP). Starting next season, the CFP expands to a 12-team format with 11 tournament-style games.
ESPN pays about $470 million annually to broadcast the current three playoff games: two semifinal games and the championship game. So how much money will 11 games command? Television networks are preparing competitive bids to get their shot at the playoff package when ESPN’s contract is up in 2026.
To get into the bidding war, Straight Arrow News spoke with Bob Thompson, former president of Fox Sports Network and co-founder of the Big Ten Network.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Simone Del Rosario: We’ve seen quotes out there in the past citing north of $2 billion for [annual broadcast rights]. Where do you think that’s going to go? Do you still think that’s feasible?
Bob Thompson: Well, I was one of those exuberant quoters of $2+ billion. You know, that was a couple of years ago, or at least a year and a half ago, and a lot has changed in the traditional media business since then.
If you look at some of the deals that have been done lately and how some of the traditional broadcast linear networks are going through a little bit of retrenchment and really counting their pennies, I think that the exuberance that was once out there for this deal is probably going to need to be tempered somewhat.
Simone Del Rosario: And where does all this money go? Who stands to make the most from this?
Bob Thompson: Well, the way they divvy up the money at this point, it’s amongst the A4 conferences, previously was A5. I’m not sure how they’re going to deal with the Pac-12 yet. And then the G5 conferences receive a smaller share as well.
Then those schools that participate in the playoffs receive an additional share on top of that. Each conference is different in how they split the money up. Some do it equally. Some give an incentive bonus to schools that make it to the playoffs. So each is different, but basically, it is returned for the most part to the schools.
Simone Del Rosario: Rumor has it Fox is making a big push for this, if not all, at least big parts of the CFP. What do you know about that?
Bob Thompson: Well, I don’t know anything in particular. I know how the people at Fox think though, having spent a number of years there. And they didn’t get into the college football business to not participate in the playoffs.
It would be highly unusual, in my experience, that they would not bid – and probably bid pretty aggressively – because they’ve got a pretty good entrenchment with the Big Ten and the Big 12. They have the Big Ten Network that they operate. It’s a game they want to play in.
And the one thing that they always like is to have not just the regular season, but you want a tournament as well. And now that they’re going to actually have one, I fully expect Fox to be in. I don’t know that it would be for all of it.
My guess is that the package is split with a rotating champ game and rotating semifinal games. That would probably be the only way that you could get two people in. Nobody wants just the first round and nobody wants the first round and just the second round. If you’re going to pay what they’re going to have to pay, you want a shot at the champ game and the semifinals as well, which are going to be the highest-rated games.
Simone Del Rosario: So you’re seeing something along the lines of what we have in the Super Bowl, where it rotates amongst different networks every year.
Bob Thompson: It’s a very traditional NFL-style model. NFL has a couple more games, I believe, because of the wildcard situation, but with the 11 games over some period of three to four weeks, it will look very much like the NFL. And that’s why I expect there to be at least two, if not more, players.
Simone Del Rosario: ESPN and NCAA just announced a deal, an 8-year extension worth nearly a billion dollars, for 40 championships. Of course, we’re not talking about FBS football, but we are talking about a bunch of other sports. Given the timing of this announcement, do you glean anything from this? Is ESPN going to focus on these investments and maybe not make as big of a push for CFP?
Bob Thompson: You know, ESPN has had this package for years and the extension announced today is a continuation of that. There was an additional, I think, nine championship events. And they also committed to put some of those events on ABC, the women’s gymnastics and women’s volleyball, which had never been on ABC before.
I think ESPN has an insatiable appetite for content. A lot of this content will likely air on ESPN plus their streaming service. So I think it’s just a continuation for them.
I think it was a nice increase for the NCAA in terms of the dollars. But again, it was coming off a deal that was 10 or 12 years old as well. So it’s kind of hard to gauge just how much of an increase that was. I mean, we know absolute dollar value how much of an increase it was, but you have to look at it over the period of 10 to 12 years.
Simone Del Rosario: With the college football playoff expanding to those 12 teams while we’re still under the ESPN reign of the CFP, does ESPN have those three games that they’ve historically had to this point and the others are up for grabs for the rest of the playoff? We know ESPN’s paying about $470 million a year to broadcast these games.
Bob Thompson: Yeah, they have really a number of deals. They have the semis and the championship game deal. Then they have the deal with the group of six New Year’s Day bowl games. All totaled, that deal averaged about $680 [million], I believe, a year.
So given that fact that there’s two years to go on the current agreement, I would assume that ESPN has the first right on the four new games that are going to occur in 2024 and 2025. If ESPN comes in with an acceptable offer for those games, it could be game set match, and we’ll just talk about this all again in another year when they’re talking about an extension for the CFP going forward beyond 2025.
My expectation is that for the CFP to maximize what they’re going to want in terms of the four new games this year, they’re going to have to do an extension of the current deal. And again, ESPN is in the driver seat because they are the incumbent.
But that doesn’t mean that it won’t go to bid and other people won’t have an opportunity to bid on it. If you look at how ESPN has been operating lately, it would not surprise me if they were fine not owning all of it.
You know, you can’t own everything and the days of exclusivity have come to an end. You look at the new NASCAR deal, you’ve got four different outlets in there with Amazon Prime, WBD Sports, NBC, Fox, and then you’ve even got the CW out there with the Xfinity Series.
So the days of owning 100% of things have come to a screeching halt and many packages are shared and I expect the CFP package to be shared as well.
This is Part 2 of Straight Arrow News’ CFP series. Catch the series kickoff in Part 1.
