The ESPN college football broadcast camera is on display before the All State Sugar Bowl playoff game between the Texas Longhorns and the Washington Huskies on Monday, January 1, 2024, at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, LA.
Nick Tre. Smith | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images
In order to strengthen its sports offering, Warner Bros. Discovery has signed a five-year sublicense agreement with Disney’s ESPN will broadcast the first-round and quarterfinal games of the College Football Playoff.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT will host two first-round games this year and next, and will add two more quarterfinal games starting in 2026. Disney also has the option to sublicense a semifinal game to Warner Bros. Discovery starting in the third year of the contract if it wants, people familiar with the matter say.
Disney will retain exclusivity on the championship game during the contract term, which runs through 2031, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private. Disney pays about $1.3 billion a year for the rights to the entire College Football Playoff.
The new 12-team College Football Playoff tournament begins in December, replacing a four-team tournament that began in 2014. In the new format, the top four teams receive byes, while the No. 5 through No. 12 seeds play first-round games at the home stadium of the higher-ranked team.
ESPN will produce the games and primarily use ESPN talent for the broadcasts, which will operate under the TNT brand, the people familiar said. Under the sublicense agreement, Warner Bros. will pay Discovery ESPN an average of “hundreds of millions” per year for the games over five years, but less in years one and two when there are only two games per year. said the people.
“It is exciting to add TNT Sports, another highly respected network, to the College Football Playoff family,” Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff, said in a statement. “Sports fans across the country are very familiar with their work in a variety of sporting events over the past two decades, and we look forward to seeing what new and innovative ideas they bring to the promotion and execution of these games.”
This year’s first round of the CFP will take place on December 20th and 21st.
CFP in, NBA out?
Warner Bros. Discovery plans to add the games to its Max Sports tier. The company is expanding its live sports operations while also engaged in difficult negotiations with the National Basketball Association over a live games package.
TNT has partnered with the NBA for nearly 40 years, but risks losing games to them Comcast-owned by NBCUniversal and Amazon if Warner Bros. Discovery decides to waive its matching rights, or if the league may choose to ignore those rights.
College football is one of the most popular shows on television. Michigan’s semifinal victory over Alabama last year drew an average audience of 27.2 million viewers – the most-watched non-NFL sporting event since 2018.
Even if Warner Bros. Discovery loses the NBA, there will now be both CFP and NBA through mid-2025, in addition to several weeks of games for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament March Madness, men’s and women’s soccer, NASCAR and Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League. This should help the company in its upcoming agreements to renew transmission capacity for TNT and its other cable networks.
ESPN’s sublicensing to Warner Bros. Discovery will also keep all CFP games on Venu Sports, the new sports streaming service being developed by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery that is expected to launch in the fall.
Disclosure: Comcast owns CNBC parent company NBCUniversal.
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2024-05-22 20:30:26
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