A deal for the College Football Playoff to increase to 24 teams in 2027 is getting close, and so is ESPN's deal to broadcast the tournament. The Worldwide Leader is Sports is the current rights holder for the CFP, and it has made a big step towards maintaining that partnership.

“The CFP has reached a handshake deal with ESPN to broadcast a 24-team playoff beginning in 2027, a source told ESPN,” ESPN's Heather Dinich posted on X, formerly Twitter. “There is still a lot of work to be done to formalize it on paper – and still subject to board approval from all parties – but another important step closer to it.”

Later, ESPN's Pete Thamel added more details to the potential deal. According to sources, ESPN will pay an average of $345 annually over the next five years for the expanded CFP. That's on top of the average $1.3 billion they had been paying to broadcast the tournament in its current format.

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On Thursday, the CFP committee sent out a statement about the negotiations with ESPN on the expanded format, saying, “Constructive discussions with ESPN continued this week.” And based on the latest updates, it seems like a deal will be finalized sooner rather than later.

Ever since the College Football Playoff's debut as a four-team tournament in 2014, it has felt inevitable that it would get to a point that it would grow larger and larger. Now it is set to balloon to 24 teams because as the looming ESPN deal shows, expanding the CFP means increasing revenue, and no one is willing to say no to that.