According to a report by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, TNT Sports is on the verge of potentially taking on some added College Football Playoff programming as part of its sublicensing agreement with ESPN and the Walt Disney Company. Dellenger is reporting that ESPN is finalizing an agreement with TNT Sports to include the College Football Playoff semifinal round, with rights to one CFP semifinal annually in 2026, 2027, and 2028.
This report builds on the current agreement between the two networks that grants TNT Sports the rights to two first-round College Football Playoff games and two quarterfinal matchups, which began last year and runs through 2028.
Therefore, this means, barring any further CFP expansion, the networks will split the broadcasts of the other ten remaining College Football Playoff games in 2026–2028.
With the addition of the semifinal on TNT Sports, it would give the network five of the eleven total CFP games under the 12-team format—but still without the National Championship Game.
Since its inception in the 2014–15 season, ESPN has exclusively aired every single CFP semifinal. Furthermore, in early 2024, ESPN and the College Football Playoff agreed to a six-year contract to retain the network as the rightsholder of the event through the 2031–32 season. As part of that deal, the network has expanded its package of games in the final two years of the agreement to include all four of the new first-round games, in addition to the quarterfinals, semifinals, and CFP National Championship Game.
As a result of the expanded sublicensing agreement—combined with ESPN’s commitment to place at least one game per round on ABC—the network would not have exclusive coverage of either semifinal during any of those seasons.
In addition to the CFP agreement, ESPN has separately agreed to sublicense some Big 12 football and men’s basketball games to TNT in exchange for the right to license the network’s “Inside the NBA” studio show for its own NBA coverage starting next season.
