Report: 12-Team College Football Playoff Could Fetch $2.2B Annual Media Rights Deal

The price of broadcasting the College Football Playoff is going up.

Way up.

Michael McCarthy and Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports reported the expanded 12-team playoff could fetch more than $2 billion when its new television contract kicks in. ESPN currently pays $470 million annually for the four-team playoff, meaning the payment is expected to more than triple.

"I think it will be north of $2 billion. So [$2.2 billion] is possible," Bob Thompson, former president of Fox Sports Networks, told Front Office Sports.

ESPN has been the sole broadcaster of the College Football Playoff since its inception in 2014. It's expected that the CFP will air on more networks than ESPN during the new broadcast deal.

Fox has been among the networks linked to a potential proposal for CFP rights.

"There's no guarantee that we would go with multiple media partners," SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey told The Paul Finebaum Show. "That's certainly a possibility. But we have to be responsible to understand we need to see the actual proposals before we make such a decision for allocating future media rights. That's the right way to go about this."

The NCAA has found prior success negotiating television rights with multiple partners, with Turner and CBS working together to broadcast the men's NCAA basketball tournament. The Big Ten recently landed a deal with CBS, Fox and NBC to split broadcasting rights for football and basketball.