CFP, ESPN negotiating window extends to next week; no deal is expected, per report
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This Friday was the deadline for College Football Playoff leadership and ESPN to reach an agreement regarding a proposed 24-team format, but it appears as if any news about the contents of those negotiations will have to wait at least a week.
According to a report by Ross Dellenger in On3, Friday is the day by which, if no deal has been reached, CFP leadership must make a formal proposal to ESPN, at which point ESPN then has five business days to respond to the offer. That would put the deadline for a decision by ESPN at Oct. 16, though Dellenger notes that could even be pushed back to Monday, Oct. 19.
“This Friday’s deadline is mostly meant for the CFP,” Dellenger explains. “By Friday, if no deal has been struck (one isn’t expected), CFP officials must make a formal offer to ESPN, at which point the network has the aforementioned five business days to respond and continue negotiations.”
Should a deal not be reached by Oct. 19, CFP leadership, which consists of the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua, can bring the 24-team proposal to the open market, where other networks can submit bids for the potential expanded playoff.
Whether or not expansion to 24 teams actually happens will come down to the value television networks place on the additional inventory. A 24-team playoff would necessitate the elimination of conference championship games, which Dellenger now pegs as being worth a combined $300 million across the FBS, up from the $200-250 million figure that has previously been floated. That means any new deal for a 24-team playoff would have to at minimum cover the $300 million in lost revenue from not playing conference championship games.
ESPN already pays $1.3 billion annually for the 12-team playoff. The network reportedly also attributes about $200 million of rights fees to its ownership of various conference championship games, like the SEC’s and ACC’s. In essence, that gives ESPN about a $200 million head start on other networks interested in bidding, because it’s money the network already allocates to college football. Would ESPN be willing to add another $100 million or more on top of that? At least one college football insider, Ralph Russo, believes ESPN has a good shot of doing just that, and retaining exclusive rights to the entire playoff.
Dellenger calculates that raising the annual price of the CFP from $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion would net SEC and Big Ten schools another $3 million per year in media distributions. Is that worth it for what would constitute a wholesale change to the sport?
“Time will tell,” Dellenger writes.
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