Earlier this month, the news dropped that the College Football Playoff Board of Managers voted to expand the postseason format from four to twelve teams. That signaled a very piqued interest in the new version’s media rights. ESPN, the current rightsholder, has signaled that it is open to sharing those rights when it comes to the expansion.
“We’ve been clear to anyone who is interested that we are very willing to be flexible here and be creative in terms of this expansion,” ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in an interview.
The “flexible” ESPN be announcing that not only are other networks very interested in getting into the College Football Playoff space, but that ESPN is not interested in overpaying for media rights to gobble up the entire twelve-team tournament. Projections for the new format could fetch in the neighborhood of $2 billion.
In the event that ESPN would not air the CFB playoff, the network strongly wants to keep the championship game and several playoff games, people familiar with the matter said.
“As it pertains to college rights, we really like our hand,” Pitaro said. “We’re incredibly well-positioned here.”
