The all-time great Alabama player announced the end of his contract in order to reach an agreement on a new contract with.
The broadcast rights to the Southeastern Conference’s biggest football games, like the annual Iron Bowl matchup between Alabama and Auburn, have been purchased by Disney, meaning that all of the league’s games will appear on its networks including ABC and ESPN for 10 years starting in 2024.
The agreement, announced Thursday evening by the ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro at Disney’s investor day, will end the SEC’s nearly three-decade association with CBS, and give Disney ownership of all of the SEC’s lucrative, and accordingly expensive, media rights.
ESPN will pay the SEC around $300 million annually for the rights, according to two people with knowledge of the agreement who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly. That is nearly a sixfold increase from the $55 million annually CBS currently pays.
ABC will show Saturday afternoon SEC games, “as well as selected Saturday primetime football games” according to an SEC news release. That is in addition to other SEC football games that will appear across ESPN cable channels and the ESPN+ streaming service.
