Vivien Killilea
ESPN (NYSE:DIS) has reached a brand new take care of the School Soccer Playoff that ensures will probably be the CFP’s sole media rights holder by means of the 2031-2032 season.
The agreements embrace an expanded bundle for the final two years of the present 12-year contract (by means of 2025-2026), and a six-year, $7.8B deal past that.
The Playoff — main school soccer’s manner of figuring out a nationwide champion by means of a four-team bracket starting in 2014 — is increasing to a brand new 12-team format for the 2024-2025 season, using the New Yr’s Six bowl video games, in addition to 4 hosted first-round video games.
ESPN will now add the 4 first-round video games to its protection of the New Yr’s Six bowls and the Nationwide Championship sport.
School soccer’s energy brokers are at the moment discussing increasing the 12-team format additional to 14 groups in two years; ESPN’s deal accommodates unique rights to all rounds of the expanded playoff in addition to for programming related to the CFP.
The brand new deal marks a monetary step up from the previous deal, which coated solely seven video games (the New Yr’s Six plus the Nationwide Championship), whereas the brand new deal will cowl 11 or 13 video games relying on whether or not the sector is 12 or 14 groups.
ESPN will begin simulcasting the Nationwide Championship sport on ABC, beginning in 2026-2027.
The information follows a robust yr for the CFP, with the semifinal video games and title sport, attaining its most-watched matchups in six years, up 15% year-over-year to 23.6M viewers.
