"They have now become landlords": Pat McAfee believes ESPN made a 'brilliant' move by sub-licensing select College Football Playoff games to TNT
ESPN has the rights to the College Football Playoffs but they made the decision to sublicense their games to other media rights holders. That decision was confirmed on Wednesday evening when it was announced that TNT Sports will broadcast a pair of first-round games each of the next two seasons and add two quarterfinal games for the 2026, 2027 and 2028 seasons.
While speaking on "The Pat McAfee Show," McAfee discussed ESPN sublicensing select College Football Playoff games to TNT Sports and how he believed this was an excellent move by the company to do so.
"[ESPN] has now become like a landlord as they are subleasing some of the games to TNT Sports. Congratulations to TNT for getting into the football world and the college football world...I think it's a brilliant idea by ESPN, good business by them."
While the monetary figure has not been disclosed, this deal involves broadcasting a total of 16 College Football Playoff games over the next five years on TNT.
What does this mean for TNT Sports in the College Football Playoff?
While this is going to be intriguing as ESPN's contract with the College Football Playoff still has a few years on it, this could be a sign of the future. With Turner looking like they are losing the rights to broadcast National Basketball Association games after the 2024-25 season, this could be the start of the company being associated with college football.
While they do not hold media rights in any college football conferences as of this writing, being a home of select College Football Playoff games will drive more eyeballs to Max, their streaming service, and begin to get the television broadcast company into more sports.
They already hold broadcasting rights for some National Hockey League games and serve as the current home of All Elite Wrestling, aligning with their commitment to live sports. However, if they are sublicensing college football games, they could be testing the waters to see if they are going to be in a bidding war for conference rights to hold more of a footprint in the broadcasting college football world.