ESPN, College Football Playoff reach 6-year, $7.8 billion media rights extension for expanded playoff

ESPN and the College Football Playoff reportedly agreed to a massive new television rights deal, according to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand.

“NEWS: ESPN and the College Football Playoff are in agreement on a 6-year, $7.8 billion rights extension pending the CFP resolving all of its outstanding issues, The Athletic has learned,” Marchand wrote on Twitter.

With that, the new playoff expansion will see plenty of time on the four-letter network.

The network will host the 12-team playoff through the 2031-32 season, according to the report. The full contract still has yet to be completed though.

“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,” Marchand wrote. “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 comment.”

As far as control of all playoff games, it get’s really interesting after the final two years of the current deal for ESPN and the playoff.

“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 site, in addition to the quarterfinals, semifinals and championship games,” Marchand wrote. “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 current New Year’s Six bowls, whose rights were already owned by ESPN.”

Change is on the horizon for the College Football Playoff and ESPN’s Heather Dinich provided fans with a forecast of what’s to come. During an appearance on The Paul Finebaum Show, Dinich reported how the CFP selection committee will pick teams for the 12-team CFP.

“It’s going to be really fun,” Dinich said. “What college football fans need to get ready for is how different the seeding is going to look from the selection committee’s Top 25. What I mean by that is, let’s just say you have Georgia as the No. 1 seed and Alabama as the No. 2 seed, hypothetically.

“If Georgia wins the SEC, Alabama at No. 2 in the seeding is going to drop to No. 5 because the four highest-ranked conference champions are going to be seeded one through four and earn first-round byes. It’s a different method of what the bracket is going to look like, so that’s important.”