ESPN open to paying SEC more to add ninth conference football game to schedule: Sources

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ESPN has indicated a willingness to increase its payment to the SEC if the conference adds a ninth game to its league football schedule, sources briefed on the matter told The Athletic.

There is no formal offer yet, those sources added, and the exact amount of the increase is unclear. But the sources said the additional money would likely be in the range of $50-80 million annually on top of the current deal, in which ESPN pays the conference $811 million per year to broadcast its sporting events. Both ESPN and the SEC declined to comment.

A change in ESPN’s stance doesn’t mean the SEC will definitely move to playing nine conference games. Now the main hurdle to expanding the league schedule may be the future College Football Playoff format, which isn’t likely to be determined until at least June. That makes it less likely — though not impossible — that the SEC makes a decision on a schedule format at its spring meetings later this month in Destin, Fla.

Still, ESPN’s willingness to up its ante is an important development, as it has been one of the main sticking points among enough SEC members to resist the push for nine games. When the SEC announced the addition of Oklahoma and Texas in July 2021, momentum toward a nine-game schedule increased instantly, with commissioner Greg Sankey among those privately in favor. (Sankey finally went public with his preference earlier this year.)

But for the past four years, members have expressed enough opposition that the conference instead went with a temporary fix of eight-game football schedules for 2024 and ’25, the first two seasons with Oklahoma and Texas. Some of the concern was competitive, especially among teams worried about reaching the six-win bowl eligibility threshold. Some of the concern was economic: A nine-game schedule means schools would play one fewer home conference game every two years, and they wanted ESPN to help make up the difference.

“One of the issues in the room for our athletics directors is what seemed to matter most, is the number to the right, the number of losses, and how do we understand what that means for our schedule moving forward?” Sankey said in March during an appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show. “I’m one who said I really think we ought to be trying to move towards a nine-game conference schedule. I think that can be positive for a lot of reasons. You watch the interest around conference games. But not if that causes us to lose opportunities.”

One reason Sankey and the SEC went with the temporary eight-game schedule was the hope that the success of the inaugural season with Oklahoma and Texas would encourage ESPN. And that appears to be exactly what happened.

The two new SEC schools were part of memorable, highly rated games, including their annual Red River rivalry and Texas’ two losses to Georgia on national stages. The SEC championship game between the Bulldogs and Longhorns was the highest-rated non-Playoff game of the college football season, and at least one SEC team was involved in eight of the 10 most highly rated games of college football’s regular season.

Another consideration for the league is the games that would not happen regularly if the SEC stayed with an eight-game schedule. The eight-game format would include only one permanent opponent for every team, so some highly rated rivalries would only be played twice every four years, including Texas-Texas A&M, Alabama-Tennessee, Alabama-LSU and Auburn-Georgia.

If the SEC went to a nine-game schedule, all those games would be played annually. Those matchups are all part of the 2024 and 2025 schedules, an unsubtle way for the SEC to show ESPN what it could be missing. (The eight-game schedule format could always be changed to account for those games, but the conference has made no move toward doing that.)

As for the CFP format, the SEC has been waiting to see whether the postseason field will expand to 14 or 16 teams and whether any automatic bids will be installed in the new format; the SEC and Big Ten have discussed pushing for as many as four bids apiece. When the SEC only got three teams in the 2024-25 Playoff field, concern over further snubs immediately boosted leaguewide sentiment about staying at eight games. The introduction of automatic bids may address those concerns, but momentum for their addition to the CFP structure may have stalled.

Another factor in a potential move off of eight-game slates: The SEC has been working closely with the Big Ten, which plays a nine-game conference schedule, and the leagues’ consideration of future scheduling partnerships may hinge on playing the same number of league opponents. The SEC could also just settle for a stronger assurance that schedule strength will matter to the CFP selection committee and assume the risk of an extra conference game in order to reap the financial benefits. The new money that would head each school’s way from ESPN would likely not even account for half of the more than $20 million schools will be allowed to distribute to athletes under a new revenue sharing system starting this summer, but it would still help.

(Photo: Eakin Howard / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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