Next season, the College Football Playoff (CFP) will expand from four teams to 12 teams, meaning that there will be additional games up for grabs, and Warner Bros. Discovery could be a player in the negotiations.
ESPN currently holds the rights for the property for the 2024 and 2025 campaigns, with a reported $470 million per year. The network could propose broadcasting all of the playoff games and renegotiate its deal, something that could be more facile considering the existing rights package. Conversely, the network could permit another entity to bid on the coveted package, and there are various interested parties rumored to be considering negotiating.
FOX Sports has the potential to be a landing spot for some of these games, especially considering that the network has rights for games within the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences.
Moreover, Warner Bros. Discovery may be interested in adding some of these games to its sports programming portfolio, which recently became available through the Max streaming platform via an exclusive add-on.
Andrew Marchand of The New York Post notes that the company is in an advantageous financial position and ready to spend again, focusing on extending its deal with the NBA. Additionally, the company has contracts with MLB, the NHL, All Elite Wrestling, and U.S. Soccer, and also works with CBS Sports to broadcast the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.
Unlike other entities though, Warner Bros. Discovery does not broadcast any college football, and it could look to pair its March Madness offering with the CFP to leverage the college advertising space.
While ESPN and FOX Sports are reportedly the favorites to land the expanded slate of CFP games, there is a chance that Amazon, Apple, and NBC Sports could all end up involved in the bidding. All of these platforms have expanded their sports portfolio in recent years and could aim to become more involved in the aggregate media landscape by coming to terms on a deal.
The resolution has yet to be decided at the moment, but it will likely prove consequential as it pertains to the path to the National Championship Game. Most of these companies will have preliminary discussions with the CFP, but the decision currently stands in the purview of the “Worldwide Leader” since it owns all of the playoff rights until the end of the 2025 season.
