ESPN to pay extra 345 million dollars a year for 24-team College Football Playoff
Five-year expansion adds about 1.7 billion to rights already costing 1.3 billion annually, scrapped conference championship games offset only part of the bill
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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - JULY 29: A detailed view of the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy during the 2026 Big Ten Football Media Days at Hilton Chicago on July 29, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images)
newsweek.com
ESPN is expected to pay an additional 345 million dollars a year over five years — roughly 1.7 billion in total — to broadcast a proposed 24-team College Football Playoff, according to the network's Pete Thamel. The preliminary agreement would expand the postseason from 12 to 24 teams beginning with the 2027 season and lift ESPN's total yearly commitment to about 1.645 billion dollars.
The network already pays an average of 1.3 billion dollars a year for playoff television rights. Some of the new money comes straight back: the 24-team format would eliminate the SEC, ACC and Big 12 championship games, broadcasts ESPN currently pays about 140 million dollars a year to carry, cutting the net new spending to roughly 205 million dollars a year. Even after that offset, the five-year cost exceeds one billion dollars. Fox, which owns the Big Ten championship rights, would recover about 50 million dollars a year from a game that would simply cease to exist.
The format trades a calendar of conference title games for a larger national tournament: five automatic qualifying spots, nineteen at-large selections, first-round byes for the eight highest seeds, and opening rounds played on college campuses. For programmes that would otherwise miss the current twelve-team field, the deal manufactures postseason inventory. For ESPN, it deepens a commitment to live football — the last programming that reliably gathers a whole audience at the same hour — while the cable subscriptions that fund these rights keep shrinking. Who ultimately pays the increase, through advertising rates, subscription prices or the balance sheet of Disney, which owns ESPN, is the question the deal leaves open.
The agreement is not final. It still requires negotiation and approval from the parties involved, including the conferences that would give up the championship games ESPN already pays to broadcast.