Yahoo Finance Warner Bros. to Share College Football Playoffs With ESPN
(Bloomberg) -- Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. is picking up some of the College Football Playoff games in a five-year deal with Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN network.
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Warner Bros.’ TNT and other outlets, such as its Max streaming service, will air two first-round games this season and add two quarterfinal matchups starting in 2026. ESPN has the option to supply Warner Bros. with more games under the agreement. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
In March, ESPN signed a six-year, $7.8 billion contract to carry the tournament through the 2031-32 season.
Warner Bros., the parent of TBS, CNN and other channels, has been increasing its commitment to sports, signing new deals in recent years for the NCAA’s March Madness, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, NASCAR and US soccer. The most recent college football playoffs averaged about 15.1 million viewers per game, Warner Bros. said.
“TNT has always been about a few, select sports rights,” Luis Silberwasser, who leads the company’s TNT Sports business, said in an interview. “We don’t need to have everything out there from pickleball to whatever.”
The company plans to promote the games through related programming focusing on the teams and players, according to Silberwasser.
“We expect the level of audience, already really high now, is going to continue to grow,” he said.
The games should help Warner Bros. bolster the viewers of its traditional TV networks, as well as the Max streaming service. Warner Bros. Disney and Fox Corp. are launching a new online service, Venu Sports, that will bring together the three companies’ sports portfolios.
Top-tier sports rights are expensive. Companies and leagues have been divvying up the packages. Warner Bros. is seeking to renew its deal with the National Basketball Association, but faces competition in the bidding from Comcast Corp. and others.
The College Football Playoff, which began in 2014, is a postseason tournament for Division 1 teams in the college system.
Shares of both companies were little changed in extended trading following the announcement.
(Adds trading in last paragraph. Company corrected earlier version to say ESPN holds option in second paragraph.)
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