With NCAA college football moving to a new, greatly expanded playoff format for the National Championship this year, ESPN and TNT Sports have reached a five-year agreement for TNT Sports to sublicense select College Football Playoff (CFP) games from ESPN, beginning with the upcoming college football season.

This year will mark the expansion of the College Football Playoff from four teams to 12. The four highest-ranking conference champions will be seeded 1-4 and receive first-round byes. The CFP first round will consist of four games played at home campus venues, with teams seeded 5-8 hosting teams seeded 9-12.

TNT Sports will present two first-round College Football Playoff games during the 2024 and 2025 seasons. In addition to the first-round games, TNT Sports will add two quarterfinal games each year –beginning with the 2026 season through the 2028 season. TNT will be the primary network televising the sublicensed CFP games, among additional TNT Sports distribution platforms.

ESPN will present all other College Football Playoff games on its networks including the annual CFP National Championship Game. ESPN will also continue to manage the sponsorship program for the presentation of the CFP.

“We’re delighted to reach this agreement with ESPN, providing TNT Sports the opportunity to showcase these College Football Playoff games on our platforms for years to come,” said Luis Silberwasser, chairman and CEO, TNT Sports. “TNT Sports aims to delight fans and drive maximum reach and engagement for these marquee games.”

"ESPN is pleased to sublicense to TNT Sports a select number of early round games of the College Football Playoff, an event we’ve helped to grow – alongside the CFP – into one of the preeminent championships,” said Rosalyn Durant, ESPN executive vice president, programming & acquisitions. “We’re confident in the reach and promotion that this new agreement will provide as we enter the new, expanded playoff era.”

“It is exciting to add TNT Sports, another highly respected broadcaster, to the College Football Playoff family,” said Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff. “Sports fans across the country are intimately familiar with their work across a wide variety of sports properties over the past two decades, and we look forward to seeing what new and innovative ideas they bring to the promotion and delivery of these games.”

The deal comes at a time when reports have suggested that Warner Bros. Discovery is likely to lose NBA rights starting next season to Comcast’s NBCUniversal. 

BRISTOL, Conn.—ESPN and the College Football Playoff (CFP) have reached a pair of media agreements that ensures ESPN will continue as the exclusive, worldwide rightsholder to college football’s postseason playoffs through the 2031-32 season. 

ESPN has been the exclusive home of the CFP since its inception in 2015. Under the new $7.8 billion deal, ESPN will expand its current package for the final two years (through the 2025-26 season), adding all four of the new First Round games each year to ESPN’s existing New Year’s Six (now Quarterfinals and Semifinals) and the CFP National Championship rights in the new 12-team playoff that will launch this Fall.

ESPN has held exclusive broadcast rights since the CFP began in 2015.

The CFP is unveiling a 12-team format for the 2024-25 season, and ESPN will add all four of the new first-round games each year to the network's existing coverage of the New Year's Six bowls (now the quarterfinals and semifinals) and the CFP National Championship game.

ESPN also secured a six-year agreement that will cost $1.3 billion annually beginning in the 2026-27 season and includes exclusive rights to all rounds of the expanded playoff along with continued exclusive rights to all programming connected to the CFP, such as the CFP selection show, weekly Top 25 ranking shows and more.

In both the amended two-year agreement and new six-year extension, the CFP provides ESPN with the right to sublicense a select number of games.

ESPN is part of a joint venture with Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp. to launch an as yet unnamed sports streaming service in the fall of 2024. The deal will help strengthen the appeal of that service.  

“ESPN has worked very closely with the College Football Playoff over the past decade to build one of the most prominent events in American sports. We look forward to enhancing our valued relationship over the next two years, and then continuing it for six more as we embark on this new, expanded playoff era,” said ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro. “This agreement further solidifies ESPN as the home of college football, as well as the destination for the vast majority of major college championships for the next eight years.”

“We are delighted to continue our long-standing relationship with ESPN,” said CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock. “It’s a significant day for the CFP and for the future of college football. The depth of coverage that ESPN gives to the sport throughout the season is second to none. There is no better platform to showcase this iconic championship as we move into the new 12-team format because ESPN’s people love college football every bit as much as we all do.”

Beginning in the 2026-27 season, ESPN will broadcast the CFP National Championship on ABC in addition to offering its signature MegaCast presentation across ESPN platforms. In all, the new agreement includes expansive rights to simulcast or MegaCast CFP games across all Walt Disney Company platforms, including Disney’s Direct-to-Consumer offerings.

The new, six-year agreement also provides expanded sales and sponsorship opportunities that will cement Disney Advertising as the exclusive seller of the College Football Playoff Official Partner Program and broaden Disney Advertising’s ability to connect more brands to the fandom and reach of the College Football Playoff.

“This new agreement solidifies the broadcast future of the College Football Playoff for many years to come,” said chairman of the CFP Board of Managers and Mississippi State University President Dr. Mark Keenum. “ESPN has been a key piece of the overwhelming success of the playoff during these first ten years. The addition of ABC to this expanded relationship is just the next step in the continued growth of one of the top sporting events of the year.”

The CFP has contributed to the most-watched days in ESPN’s nearly 45-year history, led by the first CFP Semifinals in 2015 boosting ESPN to 11.6 million average viewers for New Year’s Day. The CFP Semifinals in 2018, 2022 and 2024 anchored ESPN in rounding out the top four complete day audiences in network history. College football on ESPN accounts for the top 15 and more than 50 of the top 100 most-watched cable programs on record (since 1987), with 8 of the top 10 directly from CFP Semifinals or National Championship games, ESPN reported. 

In 2023-24, ESPN’s expansive coverage of the CFP delivered a record year. The three-game CFP scored its most-watched matchups in six years (since Year 4) and third best of the CFP era with 23.6 million viewers and 15 percent year-over-year audience growth across the trio of games. The CFP National Championship and New Year’s Six averaged 15.1 million viewers, the best audience in five years and fifth highest in the 10-year history of the CFP, up double digits year-over-year.

The agreement with the CFP marks ESPN’s second significant college sports media rights extension in 2024, following the eight-year deal with the NCAA announced in January, which encompasses exclusive rights to 40 NCAA Championship events. ESPN now boasts the exclusive domestic rights to every major college championship outside of men’s basketball, and international rights to all major college championships.

Western Michigan University’s (WMU) Division I Broncos football program has a storied history at the Kalamazoo-based school. As the 2015 Bahama Bowl winner, 2016 Mid-American Conference (MAC) champions, and participants in the 2017 Cotton Bowl, the popular team requires production technology that keeps pace with its sports program.

Video production professionals at the school determined that the slow-motion replay system used for in-arena replays and for live ESPN and ESPN+ feeds from home football, men’s and women’s soccer, and men’s and women’s basketball games was not providing a true broadcast look or an optimum training ground for students. As part of the school’s video production unit, Bronco Productions, students are responsible for the school’s sports programming feeds for ESPN and ESPN+.

WMU turned to the Envivo Replay, sports and live event replay solution from Variant Systems, which is sold all over the world, and exclusively by FOR-A in North, Central and South America. Envivo Replay is a complete replay solution with an intuitive user interface that offers support for high-speed slow-motion cameras, as well as playlists for highlights playback, built-in branding capabilities, and direct publishing to social media platforms. It allows for multiple camera inputs and multiple controlled outputs.

As of this fall, Envivo Replay is used to capture slow motion footage for Broncos’ in-stadium replays and for its streaming coverage to ESPN and ESPN+.

“We needed a slow-motion system in our truck that was more broadcast ready,” says Devon Doxey, Assistant Director, Bronco Productions. “We were looking for a replay system with the same look and feel as a professional system that was also easy to learn. The students absolutely love to use the touchscreen. I was a little worried about it at first, but it’s impressive how easy it is to use. It makes doing replays fun. I see our students use it all the time. We rely on them. Envivo Replay gives us state-of-the-art tools that lets them produce broadcast-quality video.

“Plus, we’re able to teach students on technology that’s similar to other systems used by broadcasters,” Doxey continues. “Being able to get them broadcast-ready for replay gigs in the future is something we couldn’t do before.”

Doxey cites having a dual playlist mode as another benefit: “Access to more content has made our production quality even better.”

He adds Variant’s game-day support and the system’s pricing as other factors that contributed to the switch. “With Envivo, we don’t call a technical support line to talk to someone who may or may not know what we’re talking about. We have the guy who created the system as our tech support. That’s incredible.”

Doxey serves as the Director and Producer for all ESPN streams at Western Michigan University, as well as leading all video production for scoreboard and social media content.

Envivo Replay is part of a complete live event workflow with FOR-A’s HANABI series of video switchers, ClassX 3D graphics, and video writer telestrators. 

VAN NUYS, CALIF.—The College Football Playoffs National Championship game concluded in thrilling fashion back in January and viewers got to watch in part thanks to PSSI Global Services. PSSI multiplexed, encoded and decoded a total of 74 paths at unmatched data rates as the transmission service provider for ESPN’s College Football Playoffs on all of its associated networks.

PSSI managed all inbound and outbound paths for the College Football Playoffs, which was done through both satellite and fiber. Specifically for the National Championship game between Clemson and the University of Alabama PSSI used its C27 dual-antenna mobile teleport to engineer 24 outbound paths and six inbound paths via satellite. PSSI also provided encoding and multiplexing over fiber for an additional 44 paths at the stadium, including 24 outbound paths over three multiplexed circuits at a total of 600 Mbps and 20 inbound paths over two multiplexed circuits at 400 Mbps.

Other ESPN programming received uplink and encoding services from PSSI, including “SportsCenter” and “Mike & Mike.”