The media rights permutations of College Football Playoff expansion, explained
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College Football Playoff expansion is back in the headlines.
On Monday, administrators met to discuss potential expansion options for the CFP. Consultants met with the CFP committee virtually to go over media rights implications, television scheduling, revenue projections, NFL conflicts, the future of conference championship games, and numerous other second- and third-order effects of various playoff expansion formats.
It didn’t take long for one story to break out of proceedings on Monday. ESPN has apparently begun pitching a 16-team bracket that includes four play-in games, effectively expanding the field to 20 teams with seeds 13-16 up for grabs before the first round officially kicks off. That proposal was not formally on the docket for discussion in Monday’s meeting, though the Big Ten has already apparently come out against such a format as it continues to push for a 24-team playoff.
The reasoning behind the Big Ten’s steadfast support for a 24-team format and the SEC’s similarly steadfast support for a limited expansion to 16 teams is now coming into clearer focus.
Followers of college football and readers of this site know well by now the media alignments of the two power conferences. Fox, the majority owner of Big Ten Network and the primary rightsholder for the Big Ten, is obviously aligned with the conference. Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks recently came out in favor of a 24-team playoff, just as Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has done for over a year. ESPN, which holds exclusive rights to the College Football Playoff and the SEC, is aligned with the SEC on expansion.
Rather than saying the networks are aligning themselves with their respective conferences, it might be more accurate to say the conferences are aligning themselves with their respective networks, because increasingly it seems to be the networks, not the conferences, calling the shots. And the reasons why couldn’t be clearer.
ESPN, as the exclusive rightsholder for the College Football Playoff, doesn’t want another network getting a stake in the event. It’s perfectly happy owning rights to all the games, and sublicensing the games it doesn’t want to other networks. Fox, on the other hand, would seem to want to force its way into the mix. And the easiest path for Fox to do that is through expanding the field to 24 teams.
How would that work?
Well, it has been known since expansion beyond 12 teams became a serious topic of discussion that ESPN has protections in its contract that would allow the network to remain the exclusive rightsholder for the College Football Playoff even if teams were added to the event. The exact terms of those provisions, however, have remained unclear.
For a while, it was believed that ESPN would automatically receive rights to any format up to 14 teams. That much we still know to be true. Recently, the possibility that ESPN would retain exclusive rights for any format with up to 16 teams was floated (which could explain the network’s pitch to create a 16-team format that includes four play-in games). Any format beyond 16 teams would require inventory to be taken to the open market, creating opportunities for other networks to bid on games.
But questions still remained. If the playoff expanded to more than 16 teams, would ESPN still retain rights to all games beginning in the Round of 16 and beyond, or would the entire tournament return to market? How about this: if the playoff expanded to exactly 16 teams, would ESPN have to pay more than the $1.3 billion it pays annually for the College Football Playoff?
Well, former Fox Sports Networks president and occasional Awful Announcing contributor Bob Thompson has some answers, which he shared on social media.
Expansion beyond 12 works like this. If it goes to 14, no more rights fees paid by ESPN for going from 11 to 13 games. If it goes to 16 there is a pro rata increase on the two extra games generated by going from 13 total games to 15. Beyond 16 deal is opened up. https://t.co/LVbn1VK6MO
— Bob Thompson (@rltsports) August 10, 2026
Per Thompson, if the playoff expands to 14 teams, ESPN would retain rights to all the games and not be charged more than it currently pays for the 12-team playoff. If the playoff expands to 16 teams, ESPN would pay “a pro rata increase” for the additional games, but the new inventory would not hit the open market. But most interestingly, if the playoff were to expand beyond 16 teams, the entirety of College Football Playoff rights would return to the market, and ESPN would have to compete with every other network or streamer interested in broadcasting the event. However, per Chris Vannini in The Athletic, ESPN would have first crack at any expansion to a larger field.
That’s why ESPN’s new proposal technically keeps the field at 16. By keeping the play-in games separate from the playoffs, ESPN can retain broadcast rights for the entire tournament, with only the play-in games hitting the open market.
Of course, given that the entire point of the Big Ten’s expansion crusade is to give Fox an opportunity to secure some College Football Playoff inventory, ESPN’s new proposal is likely dead on arrival. Both the Big Ten and SEC need to agree to a new format before any expansion takes place.
But the detail that expansion beyond 16 teams would send the entirety of the College Football Playoff’s broadcast rights to the open market, where ESPN, Fox, Amazon, CBS, NBC, Netflix, or whoever else could hypothetically bid, is a major development that wasn’t entirely clear based on prior reporting, which seemed to leave open the possibility that it was only the additional inventory that would be brought to market with expansion.
With ESPN, Fox, and the Big Ten all pretty entrenched in their positions, the wild card in the playoff expansion formula would seem to be the SEC. While the SEC is certainly aligned with ESPN in most cases, the conference is also facing expansion pressures by some of its own athletic departments. Coaches would like to add job security with playoff expansion. Athletic departments would like to see their hefty roster-construction investments pay off with playoff berths.
How SEC commissioner Greg Sankey chooses to navigate those competing forces could very well determine how and when the playoff is expanded.
The post The media rights permutations of College Football Playoff expansion, explained appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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