• Later this year, you'll finally be able to subscribe to ESPN without paying for other cable TV channels.
• The new service will be called ESPN and cost $30 a month.
• The fact that Disney, which owns ESPN, has taken a decade to launch this tells you a lot about the state of the TV industry.

Here's a scenario: You don't pay for cable TV, but you love sports. And you hear that ESPN will now let you buy a streaming version of the sports channel. So you sign up, for $30 a month.

And here's an alternate scenario: You pay upward of $100 a month for cable TV, but you're really only doing that so you can watch sports. So when stand-alone ESPN comes along, you drop your cable subscription and move to ESPN's $30-a-month plan.

Both of these scenarios are good for ESPN's owner, Disney. Either way, the company gets a monthly subscription fee from you.

But for now, Disney has to maintain in public that it's really interested in the first scenario.

"Our priority is looking at the 60 million-plus people that are on the sidelines," ESPN's boss, Jimmy Pitaro, said at a launch event Tuesday morning — referring to the pool of people who don't have a TV subscription.

But the truth is that both ESPN and the rest of the TV industry know there are people who might stop getting cable TV once they can just get ESPN. Which means they know the new service could help speed up the erosion of the cable TV industry.

And that also explains why this launch announcement — the service itself will come online sometime in late summer, in time for the NFL season — is taking place in 2025. Even though there's been intense speculation for a decade about a streaming-only version of ESPN.

That's because Disney, along with other TV network operators, has spent years trying to keep a foot in each canoe: offering some of its best programming on digital-only services like Disney+ and ESPN+, while keeping other core offerings on its traditional networks, like ABC and ESPN.

Because while old-time TV networks are fading away, they still generate meaningful revenue and profits for Disney and every other cable TV owner.

So in 2015, when Disney CEO Bob Iger first freaked out the industry by acknowledging ESPN's subscription base was starting to shrink, the company was loath to move to an ESPN-only option.

Fast-forward to the present: It's now commonplace for big cable channels like HBO to sell their programming as stand-alone streaming services. And the companies that own traditional cable channels are trying to figure out how to get rid of most of them. See, for instance, Comcast's plans to jettison most of its cable properties into a separate company, and Warner Bros. Discovery maneuvering so it can do the same.

Will you pay $30 a month for a stand-alone ESPN?

So while stand-alone ESPN is a big milestone for Disney and the TV industry, it's a muted one. We've been expecting this forever, and now it's finally here.

Meanwhile: Do you actually want to pay $30 for a stand-alone version of ESPN?

Because while that will give you a lot of sports, given ESPN's rights deals with the NFL, the NBA, and many of the biggest college football teams, it won't give you all the sports.

Notably: NFL fans — the most important group of sports fans, given the NFL's TV dominance — will still have to turn to other outlets to watch all the games, which are spread out across Fox, Paramount's CBS, Comcast's NBC and Peacock, and Amazon and Netflix. So ESPN won't be a one-stop solution for them.

That's a big reason Disney, Fox, and WBD teamed up a year ago to put together Venu, a bigger bundle of sports offerings. That one was supposed to go for about $50 a month, and its existence was a tacit admission that Disney itself didn't know how big the demand would be for an ESPN-only streamer.

Venu was supposed to launch later this year. But in January, the three companies pulled the plug on the joint venture. Now, Fox is launching its own sports-heavy streamer, and Disney and Fox may end up in some kind of deal down the line.

So on the one hand, the future we were thinking about 10 years ago is finally here: You are going to have lots of ways to pay for sports without having to sign up for a cable TV bundle.

On the other hand: Now that we've got it, we have no idea how many people are going to want it.

• Stephen A. Smith signed a new contract with ESPN for "First Take."
• He has said his $100 million salary ask was about being "fully aware" of the market and his value.
• His strategy of researching your industry and what top performers get paid is good for negotiating.

When the sports commentator Stephen A. Smith compared his ideal compensation to that of an NFL starting quarterback, the man interviewing him balked.

Smith, though, was unapologetic about asking for $100 million over five years.

"I always want as much money as I can get. I'm not going to apologize to that — I'm a capitalist," he said in a September interview on "The Chris Wallace Show."

It looks like his approach paid off — and it's a lesson in the role that confidence in what you bring to the table, combined with researching the wider market, can play in compensation negotiations.

On Friday, ESPN announced a multiyear contract with the 57-year-old TV personality as the featured commentator and executive producer of "First Take." The deal is worth at least $100 million, The Athletic first reported. Business Insider hasn't independently confirmed the value of the deal, and ESPN declined to comment.

Smith's rationale for asking for $100 million is advice anyone can apply when preparing to ask for a raise in their next annual review or negotiating a job offer.

"I would ask, respectfully, pay attention to the industry. See what people are getting paid," Smith said. "See how much money they're making and what they're bringing to the table."

In an uncertain job market with layoffs and hiring freezes, it can feel awkward or daunting to ask for more money.

Smith's approach wasn't just to lead with confidence — he had the numbers to back it up, pointing to his past ratings. His ESPN show, "First Take," had an "unprecedented, record-setting run" in 2024 with an average of 482,000 viewers a show in April, the sports network said in May.

Smith said preparation is key — and he advised against letting emotion drive the conversation, or taking things overly personally when negotiating pay.

"The numbers are always arguable," Smith said in a November interview. But the goal, he said, is to have a "ballpark idea of what those numbers are and what your worth is, and by virtue of that, when they come to you, you're able to negotiate."

Timing can also play a role.

"Consider bringing up your salary increase request after a project or achievement as most successful negotiations happen during such moments," Maxime Bouillon, the CEO and a cofounder of Archie, a Montreal-based hybrid-workspace platform, previously told BI.

Smith told Wallace it all boiled down to one thing: "I'm fully aware of what I'm worth."

• ESPN and MLB are opting out of their TV deal early. The partnership will end with the 2025 season.
• ESPN's sports rights are of particular interest ahead of the fall launch of its flagship streamer.
• Analysts say the sports broadcaster is in a "position of strength" when it comes to negotiations.

ESPN and Major League Baseball are ending their TV deal. ESPN isn't sweating the divorce.

The companies announced on Thursday that they opted out of their contract early. The decision to end the deal with the 2025 season came after ESPN felt it was paying more for the rights to its Sunday slot than streamers Apple and Roku were for their games, a source close to ESPN told Business Insider.

Like other sports broadcasters and streamers, Disney's ESPN has been snapping up sports rights, from renewing its deal with the NBA last year to re-upping its college sports contract with the ACC. As it nears the fall launch of its flagship streamer, its decisions are publicly under the microscope. The company appears to be picking and choosing its battles carefully.

"Sports rights have gone up so much, at some point, there has to be some financial discipline," Jessica Reif Ehrlich, managing director at Bank of America Securities, told BI.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred wrote in a letter first published by The Athletic that he didn't think the league should reduce its fees for ESPN, which has exclusive games, unlike Apple and Roku's packages. He also wrote that the league was displeased with the lack of coverage ESPN provided outside game-time broadcasts. The MLB declined to comment on this story.

As the two prepare to part ways, some analysts told BI that the Disney property won't miss out on too much. ESPN has the rights to many sports and events outside baseball. In the next few months alone, the NBA and NHL playoffs, the Masters tournament in golf, and many college sports are coming.

"ESPN, generally, is in a position of strength," Reif Ehrlich said. She pointed to ESPN's distribution footprint, which includes traditional pay TV, sports-focused streaming bundles, and its own streaming services. "ESPN is a highly desirable platform for any sport."

ESPN is making power plays ahead of its streaming launch

MLB isn't the only league ESPN is playing hardball with.

The company recently walked away from its exclusive negotiation window with Formula 1 without a contract, Puck News reported. It is also in negotiations with the UFC, though no deal has yet been announced.

The source close to ESPN told BI that baseball has a long season, and its ratings haven't been as strong as some other sports.

Last year, the MLB said ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball program had an average viewership of about 1.5 million, the most the MLB had on the platform in over five years.

Under the MLB deal, ESPN could show baseball games on Sunday and some other events, as well as mostly regular season highlights on SportsCenter. It didn't have the rights to the World Series. With the restrictions on what ESPN could cover, the move to split was not shocking, said Rief Ehrlich.

As Disney works to launch ESPN's flagship, it is arguably more important that it picks and chooses the content it wants and becomes more selective, the analysts said.

ESPN is saving $600 million in programming expenses by cutting the MLB, according to a MoffettNathanson report published on February 21.

Of course, walking away from MLB could undermine ESPN's long-term ambition of being the streaming home for sports in the US.

"Considering the totality of Disney and ESPN's streaming ambitions, we believe an opt-out would likely be a mistake," Lightshed Partners wrote in a report earlier in February.

Still, the decision likely came down to whether Disney thought the MLB rights could meaningfully draw subscribers for its streaming services.

"Disney didn't value [the MLB] as a prime mover of acquisition," Joe Bonner, an analyst at Argus Research, told BI.

• Disney is adding to a growing number of sports streaming options for viewers this year.
• It's combining Fubo with Hulu + Live TV and making ESPN available in multiple ways.
• Disney CEO Bob Iger said the goal is to make ESPN as "accessible as possible."

Disney CEO Bob Iger has a guiding principle for ESPN: Make it "as accessible as possible and in as many ways as possible."

That's what Iger said on an earnings call Wednesday when an analyst asked him about "consumer confusion" that could arise from Disney's complicated sports strategy.

To recap: Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery announced last year they would team up to launch Venu, a sports streaming service, only to scrap it in January. (They'd settled an antitrust lawsuit with the streaming TV service Fubo, but legal challenges were looming from other TV providers who said they were being prevented from launching a similar service.)

Then, in another head-turning move, Disney said it would basically buy Fubo itself and merge it with Disney's Hulu + Live TV service. As part of that deal, Fubo can launch a "skinny" bundle of Disney properties that show sports, such as ESPN and ABC.

Making matters even more complicated for sports fans, Comcast and DirecTV are launching their own skinny sports bundles — both of which will include ESPN.

Disney also still plans to launch its own ESPN-only "flagship" service this fall.

It's difficult to keep all of Disney's sports moves straight, which has led some analysts to raise the concern that all these options could confuse viewers.

On Wednesday, Iger walked through the company's various moves to try to explain why the company was planning so many options for ESPN.

"After the decision was made and we decided to implement the launch of Venu, the emergence of these skinnier bundles surfaced," he said. "And Venu basically looked redundant to us."

Iger went on to say he felt this was a "great opportunity" because now ESPN could be available in multiple skinny bundles, in keeping with Disney's goal of giving people a menu of ways to experience ESPN. He said Hulu + Live TV was never a core thing for Disney, so merging it with Fubo made it a more attractive business.

As for the ESPN flagship, that's for the hardcore sports fan. Iger said the coming streamer, which Disney plans to launch in the fall, would be enhanced with betting, fantasy games, and a high degree of customization and personalization.

"We have the advantage of not only sports, but we're on 365 days a year, 24 hours a day," he said. "It's about sports every single day of the year. That's a pretty compelling consumer proposition."

• Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery have canceled Venu, a would-be sports streaming service.
• The companies announced the decision days after announcing plans to launch the service.
• What happened in between?

On Monday, the people behind Venu — the sports streaming service co-owned by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery — were gearing up their launch plans after solving a legal challenge.

A few days later, they decided to kill the service entirely — though it looks like what will amount to a different version of the original idea may end up launching, anyway.

Disney, Fox and WBD announced plans for Venu nearly a year ago and initially scheduled a debut in the fall of 2024. But that joint venture will never see the light of day, the three companies announced Friday morning.

The reasoning behind the astonishing decision, via sources at the three companies: the premise of even more legal challenges, which could delay the streamer even more and cost the companies time and money.

While the Venu joint venture settled an antitrust lawsuit with the streaming TV service Fubo on Monday, that decision drew immediate complaints from other TV providers, who said they were being prevented from launching a similar service.

The satellite TV services DirecTV and Dish both sent letters this week to the federal judge who had been overseeing the Fubo court case, arguing that the settlement was a "payoff" and suggesting that they would file their own suits. Other TV providers might launch similar objections, people at the joint-venture companies say.

So on Thursday, Venu's owners decided to bail completely. "In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels," the companies said Friday.

That end of Venu doesn't affect the deal Disney announced this week to essentially buy Fubo itself: It's merging its Hulu + Live TV service with Fubo and will own 70% of the company once that deal is closed.

And part of that deal will give Fubo the right to launch a new "skinny" bundle of Disney properties that show sports, like ESPN and ABC.

On Monday, when Fubo and the joint-venture partners announced a settlement, Fubo executives also told investors that they had a new distribution agreement with Fox, and suggested that Fox would be part of that skinny bundle as well.

Which would mean that Fubo would end up with the rights to sell a service that looks a lot like Venu — minus the programming WBD was supposed to provide. It seems likely that for now WBD will sit pat with its existing distribution plans — relying primarily on its TNT network, some of which also streams on its Max platform.

Which means Fubo, which a year ago was an also-ran streamer that was shut out of a crucial sports streaming deal, now seems like "the undisputed winner" of the entire mess, as an industry executive told me Friday morning.

A Fubo rep said the company had no news to announce regarding a possible Fox deal. Fox declined to comment.

What does this mean for viewers? It's hard to say: The initial announcement about the Venu joint venture seemed like a very big deal. But it was an open question whether sports viewers would pay $43 for a service that had a lot of sports — but not all the sports, including some major parts of the NFL schedule.

Meanwhile, Disney is continuing with plans to launch its own ESPN-only service this fall. And in addition to the Fubo "skinny bundle" the two companies announced, Disney has licensed a similar deal with DirecTV. All of which means there are going to be lots of ways to watch, and pay for, ESPN in the next year or so.

• Disney and pay-TV provider Fubo just reached a deal that will shake up sports TV.
• There will be new ways to watch sports in 2025, including new services from ESPN.
• Media analysts shared what the new deal means for sports fans, including cord-cutters.

Disney's fear of not getting sports streaming right is making the whole marketplace confusing for viewers.

A newly announced deal between Disney and Fubo will give sports fans more streaming choices in 2025.

The Mouse House is combining its Hulu + Live TV service with pay-TV streamer Fubo's business. The deal paves the way for a new sports streamer, Venu, to debut in the coming months, featuring sports content from ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox. (Venu's launch had been blocked by a ruling in a lawsuit started by Fubo.)

Disney's ESPN is also set to launch a flagship streaming platform this fall with content from all its networks. The sports broadcaster has a smaller service as well, ESPN+, with niche sports, some of which are now available for no extra charge on Disney+.

Sports fans are now inundated with ways to watch their favorite teams. Most games are on cable or internet-based substitutes like Hulu + Live TV, Fubo, and YouTube TV, which has had a slew of price hikes but is often still cheaper than most pay-TV packages.

But some matches are exclusively streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, or Netflix, or are simulcast on apps like Paramount+ and Max. Then there are regional sports networks, which have their own streaming apps in some markets.

And that's all before Venu and stand-alone ESPN enter the market.

In theory, fans should be thrilled. Each customer will be able to almost endlessly customize and control what they pay for, instead of being stuck with the one-size-fits-all approach of the past.

But all these options could confuse casual fans.

Is paralysis by analysis a problem?

Disney is throwing everything at the wall to make sure sports broadcaster ESPN survives the shift to streaming. Sports still drive massive ratings and subscriber growth.

"Why does Disney want to add another streaming platform to its already long and growing list of consumer streaming offerings?" wrote MoffettNathanson's Robert Fishman and Michael Nathanson in a recent note. They said this deal, which keeps Fubo and Hulu + Live as separate services, "only further confuses the long-term streaming strategy for Disney investors."

It's not just investors who have to sift through Disney's streaming menu. Sports fans may struggle to discern what content is available on which service.

One simple reason Disney is giving sports fans a bevy of options across price points is that it doesn't know exactly what they'll want.

It's unclear if this fast-changing media market can support ESPN's flagship streamer and Venu, in addition to other pay-TV services — as Business Insider's Peter Kafka wrote. Consolidation may be inevitable.

But while ESPN hopes its stand-alone flagship service breaks through, it doesn't necessarily matter how the company reaches customers in the late 2020s and 2030s, provided it still gets paid.

Macquarie's Tim Nollen told BI that Disney's multi-pronged approach is the right one.

"Disney is giving itself a much better chance to succeed," Nollen said. "It's smart to provide yourself with the most options you can."

Consumers can win, despite confusion

Analysts generally said Disney and Fubo's deal is a win-win for the companies and for consumers.

Venu is entering the market at a price tag of $43 a month, far cheaper than competing pay-TV offerings.

The Disney-Fubo tie-up could eventually lead to higher prices, as consolidation often does, said Adam Rhodes, a distressed debt analyst at credit-intelligence firm Octus, echoing a concern in the ruling against Venu.

However, others said Fubo was already weak and could have folded if it stayed on its own.

"Technically, having one fewer player probably makes it less competitive," Brian Wieser, who writes the Madison and Wall newsletter, told BI of the Disney-Fubo deal. "On the other hand, you could argue that maybe Fubo isn't in the best position as a smaller player, given the cost of content."

Now, Fubo could unveil its own skinny sports bundle, similar to Venu's, which would be a win for consumers.

"They were kind of an also-ran in the marketplace," Corey Martin, the chair of law firm Granderson Des Rochers' Entertainment Finance Practice, said of Fubo. "They're actually better capitalized, and better positioned to execute on its strategy."

No matter how the sports streaming market shakes out, consumers can't say they lack choices.

• Disney and partners have settled with Fubo to launch the Venu sports streaming service.
• Venu's launch was delayed over an antitrust suit filed by Fubo.
• Disney is set to merge Hulu + Live TV with Fubo, creating a major digital TV service.

Remember Venu, the sports streaming service co-owned by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery?

Unless you spend a lot of time focused on the sports media business, you probably don't. That's because the service never launched: It was supposed to go live in the fall but got derailed by an antitrust suit filed by Fubo, a small streaming service.

Now it's again set to launch — after Disney and its partners essentially paid Fubo to drop the suit. Hearings in the case were supposed to start Monday.

Part of the payment will be cash, but there's a more eye-popping, and confusing, part of the deal: Disney plans to combine its Hulu + Live TV streaming service — its cablelike package of TV channels — with Fubo's similar service into a new company, which doesn't have a name yet.

The combined company should have about 6 million subscribers, making it the second-largest all-digital TV service after YouTube TV, which has some 8 million subscribers. And it would be the sixth-largest pay-TV service, period.

(Important note: This deal does not affect Disney's much bigger Hulu subscription on-demand service — the one most people think about when they think of Hulu. That one had 47.4 million subscribers as of September; Hulu + Live TV, which costs much more, has 4.6 million subscribers.)

We can get into a few more details in a moment. But to me, the biggest takeaway is this: It's a reminder that Disney, which is launching its own stand-alone ESPN streaming service this fall, isn't fully confident about that service's prospects. That's why it wanted to be in Venu — to be part of a bigger sports streaming service, in case a meaningful number of people wanted streaming sports from ESPN and other networks as well.

And now that Venu is (very likely) to launch this year, it means that by next fall, ESPN watchers will have a lot of options: They can pay for stand-alone ESPN; they can pay for it as part of a sports-streaming package along with other channels like ABC, TNT, and Fox; or they can pay for it as part of a very big bundle of channels, delivered by a variety of traditional and digital pay-TV companies.

Onto the details: The new, unnamed Disney/Fubo joint venture would be 70% owned by Disney, which would also control its board. But Fubo's existing management team would run the service. The deal also allows Fubo to create a new "skinny" bundle of networks including ESPN and ABC. And people who are already paying for Fubo or Hulu + Live TV via existing apps would be able to keep doing that.

Fubo also gets cash as part of the deal. Disney, Fox, and WBD plan to collectively pay the company $220 million, and next year Disney is set to lend the company $145 million to help pay down Fubo's other debt obligations. Fubo will get a $130 million fee if the deal doesn't get regulatory approval.

Fubo shareholders like the deal, pushing the stock up some 172% Monday to about $4. (Fubo had a brief pandemic-fueled run in 2021 when its shares zoomed up to $49, but since then, the market has mostly ignored it.)

So, when will Venu launch? No one is saying, but my hunch is this spring.

Remember that Venu was originally supposed to launch in the fall, when college and pro football kicked off. But Disney is already planning on launching "Flagship" — its ESPN-only service — this fall for the same football-related reasons, and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to launch both services at the same time.

So I would expect Venu to go up much earlier once the joint venture, which has been mostly mothballed for months, is ready for prime time. Some big sports dates coming up to keep in mind: The Super Bowl is February 9; college basketball's big tournament kicks off in mid-March.

• Starting next fall, you'll be able to watch ESPN without paying for other cable channels.
• ESPN hasn't said how much its new streaming service will cost. Analysts think it might go for about $25 a month.
• ESPN isn't sure how many takers the new service will have. It's hoping a new ad campaign will prime the pump.

If you pay attention to the media business, you know that ESPN is going to cut the cord next year. Disney's sports channel is finally going to offer TV viewers a chance to subscribe to ESPN as a stand-alone streaming service, like Netflix or Max.

But ESPN needs to reach a much bigger audience than people who pay attention to the media business if this thing is going to work.

So here's a new ad that's supposed to "set the stage for ESPN's upcoming chapter," per the company's press release. It's going to start airing on Christmas.

This one isn't for me. But I'm not a professional ad critic. And lots of times, the ad campaigns that ad critics swoon over don't really move the needle, so who knows?

But I am old, and I remember the 1990s, when ESPN's SportsCenter was the center of the sports universe. And the winking, mockumentary spots it ran all the time made you feel like you weren't wasting your time watching sports. Sports were fun, but also funny, and you were in on the joke, too.

Anyway. Things are different now. Let's look ahead to the future. Specifically next fall, when what ESPN refers to as "Flagship" is supposed to launch. (This is different than the ESPN+ service it already sells, which shows you stuff that's not on ESPN; Flagship will be a streamed version of all the stuff that's on "real" ESPN.) How much will it cost, and how many people will sign up?

The company has yet to reveal pricing, or audience projections, so outside estimates can vary wildly.

MoffettNathanson analyst Rob Fishman thinks ESPN will sell Flagship for about $25 a month, and projects modest pickup at first: 1 million paid subscribers by the end of 2026, 1.5 million in 2027, and 3 million by 2030.

Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall is way more bullish. He thinks ESPN will sell Flagship for $23 a month, and projects 12 million subscribers in 2027, and 17 million by 2030.

That big spread reflects the uncertainty I've heard coming from Disney and ESPN insiders themselves. They simply don't know how many people will want to pay for a service that gives them a lot of sports, but not all the sports on TV. And they also don't know if the people who do pay are going to be cable TV subscribers who are trading down from a big bundle of channels — or if they will be cord-cutters/cord-nevers who aren't paying for cable in the first place.

That uncertainty was part of the rationale for ESPN's participation in Venu, the "Hulu for sports" streaming service that was going to cost $43 a month, and would include ESPN and other Disney channels like ABC, as well as sports and non-sports programming from Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery. The thinking/hope was that between traditional TV, the stand-alone streamer, and the joint venture, ESPN would end up capturing whatever audience wanted to pay for sports, no matter how they wanted to pay for it.

Venu was supposed to have launched already, but has been held up by an antitrust legal challenge; a trial is supposed to get underway in early January. So if Disney and its partners win, ESPN could find itself launching two different streamers next year.

• College football used to have a regular season and some bowl games you may or may not have watched.
• Now college football has its own playoffs — and this year, it is supersizing them.
• Can Americans invest even more time watching football? It's a good bet.

Are you ready for some college football? A lot of college football?

Doesn't matter. If you live in America and you're going to be around a TV over the next few weeks, it's going to be hard not to see college football.

That's because this is the first year college football is running a supersize version of its playoffs, featuring 12 teams, up from four. That means there are going to be 11 games — from Friday to January 20 — that are going to get a lot of attention from a lot of people.

The commercial calculation here is straightforward: National playoffs draw national interest for what is often a regional sport. So more national playoff games equals more interest.

That's why Disney's ESPN is paying $1.3 billion a year for the (mostly) exclusive rights to the playoffs. (Disney, somewhat weirdly, has sublicensed a few of the playoff games to its frenemy Warner Bros. Discovery's TNT network.)

ESPN's customers think the playoffs will be popular, too. The network says it has added dozens of new advertisers to its playoff lineup and is boasting about big increases in revenue.

But even before the first snap of the first game, the bulked-up tournament seems like it has already been a hit by boosting the pre-playoff games. Nielsen says regular-season ratings for college football were up 6% this fall compared with 2023 — and up 11% for adults ages 18 to 34.

In a world where traditional TV shrinks every year — and even more so with young viewers — that's quite a bump. And it's exactly what the media industry was hoping for.

"There were more games, throughout more of the regular season, that were meaningful and impactful for the playoff race," says Amanda Gifford, who heads up college football production for ESPN. "Almost every weekend, there were games that had impact."

That boost wasn't just confined to games on ESPN. Mike Mulvihill, who heads up analytics and strategic planning for Fox Sports and Fox broadcast, says his team thought about playoff implications as it was planning which regular-season games it would broadcast this year.

Early in the season, when it wouldn't be clear which schools were likely to compete for a playoff slot, Fox leaned on brand-name matchups, like Alabama vs. Wisconsin. But later in the season, when Indiana became a surprising playoff contender, Fox was delighted to broadcast its game against Ohio State.

I've seen the effects of expanded playoffs play out in real life: A couple of weekends ago, I spent the night with a bunch of middle-age dudes who were toggling between multiple college games, none of which featured Notre Dame, where they had all graduated. But they cared deeply about what happened in games like Texas vs. Georgia because the results could affect where the Irish would end up in the playoff. (Notre Dame ended up matched up against Indiana for the playoff's opening game).

So, if college football is winning, who's losing?

In theory, these games could end up competing with pro football, whose end-of-season games and early-round playoff season overlap with the college tournament. But you'd have to be a very brave person to bet against the NFL — the one thing Americans will watch on TV no matter what.

A much safer wager: College football's playoffs will destroy any remaining interest in all of the also-ran bowl games, which have already been steadily downgraded by fans and networks — some of which don't bother to send announcing crews to the games.

So sorry, Myrtle Beach Bowl. You, too, GameAbove Sports Bowl. And I'm from Minnesota, but I'm still not going to watch the Golden Gophers play Virginia Tech in the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Who cares who wins any of those?

But on Saturday, in the first round of the playoffs, Penn State is playing Southern Methodist — a school I vaguely remember being kicked out of college football for paying players. Now it's essentially legal — and encouraged — and whoever wins gets into an even higher-stakes game 10 days later. Truth be told, I'm not a college football guy. But I'm in, anyway.

Correction: December 20, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the matchup for the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Minnesota is set to play Virginia Tech, not West Virginia.