Report: ESPN willing to pay 'range' of $50-80 million more for 9th SEC game

ESPN is willing to pay a range of $50-80 million more to the SEC for a ninth conference game, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand and Seth Emerson reported. The league is expected to renew discussions about expanding the league slate from eight games to nine.

The network has not made a formal offer, according to The Athletic, and the exact amount of additional money ESPN is willing to pay is also not clear. A nine-game SEC schedule was discussed last year, but tabled as the College Football Playoff got ready to expand to 12 teams.

Commissioner Greg Sankey cited the need to see how the committee weighs strength of schedule in the decision to hold off on a decision. Additionally, Oklahoma and Texas joined the league, and those additions played a role in avoiding a final move.

The 2024 season marked the SEC’s first under its exclusive media rights deal with ESPN and ABC. It turned into an impressive debut for the Disney networks as eight of the 10 most-watched teams in college football came from the SEC. Sankey also said Disney would have a seat at the table for discussions about an expanded schedule.

Where Greg Sankey stands on 9-game SEC schedule

In March, Greg Sankey spoke with The Post & Courier and said the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin could be the time the league makes a decision. Specifically with the College Football Playoff implications, while speaking on The Paul Finebaum Show, he pointed out the key issue is how conference losses factor into entry to the 12-team field after expansion.

“When you look at our path forward, we look at the next few months being really important to gather information, talk about either opportunities or obstacles that may be in the way to the extent we can answer that. Like, what the priority of bowl qualification in the future? That’s still an important issue,” said Sankey. “Trying to understand how the selection committee for the CFP made decisions are really important. One of the issues in the room for athletics directors is, what seemed to matter most is the number to the right – the number of losses. How do we understand what that means for our schedule moving forward?”

“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. I can name some associations around that and that’s part of our thinking for our own schedule. That doesn’t necessarily guard (Playoff) decision-making but I do think it’s important to understand how selection decisions are made and we only have one year of that experience as we go to make another decision about our schedule format.”