CBS beats ESPN to claim U.S. TV rights to EFL - and has bold plan to tap into 'the drama' (2024)

CBS Sports is the new home of the English Football League (EFL) and Carabao Cup in the United States after agreeing a four-deal to prise coverage of the competitions away from ESPN.

The Athletic can reveal CBS will air at least 250 EFL matches per season across the Championship, League One, League Two, Carabao Cup and EFL Trophy, starting when the new season begins next month and running through until the end of the 2027-28 campaign.

CBS has committed to broadcast a minimum of 155 matches from the second-tier Championship, at least 38 fixtures across Leagues One and League Two, the third and fourth divisions, all of the end-of-season promotion play-off games and a minimum of 30 ties in the Carabao Cup, English football’s No 2 knockout tournament after the FA Cup.

Relevent Sports negotiated the sale of the rights on behalf of the EFL.

Relevent is part of the Stephen Ross portfolio of sports and entertainment companies that include the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, Hard Rock Stadium (which hosted the weekend’s Copa America final and is one of the venues for the 2026 World Cup), Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix and Miami Open Tennis.It is also the company that has been battling world football’s governing body FIFA and the U.S. Soccer Federation in the courts, after being prevented from bringing a Spanish La Liga fixture over to be played in the United States. FIFA has been dropped from the lawsuit after saying it is prepared to review its policies, opening the door to the possibility of domestic fixtures being played abroad.

However, speaking to The Athletic, Relevent’s chief executive Daniel Sillman insists there is nothing in this U.S. broadcast deal with CBS that would provide a gateway for EFL games or Carabao Cup ties to be taken on a one-off basis outside of their domestic territory. He adds: “We didn’t discuss any league matches coming over (to the U.S.) with the EFL.”

Relevent Sports and TV rights

• Relevent Sports’ lawsuit against FIFA, U.S. Soccer: What it means and why it’s happening
• Why European football matches might finally be coming to the U.S.

EFL sources, who spoke anonymously due to the commercial sensitivities of the deal, said the EFL is up financially on its previous rights cycle in the Americas. The EFL had a guarantee of a $56million (£43m) sum for its TV rights in the Americas, which is the price Relevent paid to become the agency that would represent the 72-team league across these markets, while Relevent is in negotiations to sell the EFL’s regional betting rights.

There is a joint Relevent-EFL marketing pot as part of the agreement. Relevent keeps all revenues above the guaranteed $56M up to certain level, and then 80 per cent above that goes to the EFL

“ESPN wanted to keep the product,” Sillman says. “That’s what made for a number of interesting conversations in terms of finding the best fit for the EFL, in that they were fortunate to have demand from multiple suitors.”

Did interest come from major streaming platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon or Apple?

Relevent president Boris Gartner says: “With the type of property that it is, we’re going more for a wider distribution. So, even though we had conversations with all of the above, the focus for us was landing on a platform to give the widest distribution and the widest promotion for the property.”

Sillman adds: “We wanted the right partner for the EFL that’s going to market the league in a way that has not been done, historically. We don’t want it just to sit on a streaming service and sit behind other sports or other football products. We wanted somebody that was going to market it, and we knew from our experience with Paramount on UEFA Champions League, Europa League and Conference League that they use the Golazo show to really tell great stories about the clubs and the players.”

America’s growing curiosity regarding the English football pyramid has been best underlined by the global success of Welcome To Wrexham, the Emmy-winning docuseries that has charted their rise from the fifth-tier National League to League One in successive seasons under the ownership of Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Twenty-six clubs across the EFL have U.S. investment (36 per cent), including Championship side Leeds United, who are owned by 49ers Enterprises, effectively the same group that runs the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.

Other high-profile examples include an investment in Burnley, now a Championship side after last season’s relegation from the Premier League, by former NFL star JJ Watt and his former USWNT international wife Kealia, plus a role at Birmingham City, who also suffered relegation last season and are now in League One, for seven-time Super Bowl champion ex-NFL quarterback Tom Brady.

Watt, now an analyst for CBS’ NFL coverage, says he has followed Burnley in all sorts of circ*mstances.

“I would have to go back and double-check, but I don’t believe we’ve missed watching a single match since we came on board the ownership team,” Watt tells The Athletic. “I have woken up at 4am multiple times (because of the time difference to the UK) — coffee comes in handy. I have streamed on my phone at a wedding, I have set up an iPad on the beach during vacation. One time, I flew from Houston to the UK (a nine-hour trip), landed and went straight to Turf Moor (Burnley’s stadium) for the match, then flew right back to Houston after.

“ I went and lived in England for a month with my family, so we could catch five matches and I could spend a week training/sitting in with the squad.”

“The appeal is the history, the passion, the supporters, the adrenaline. Promotion and relegation make the stakes even higher and definitely draws out the competitor in all of us. Once your playing career ends, you look for somewhere to focus that energy, to fill that competitive void, to provide a mountain to climb. Being part of the ownership process of an EFL club helps check a lot of those boxes and most of all… it’s incredibly fun.”

EFL and Carabao Cup matches will air on Paramount+, with select matches apppearing on CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports Golazo.

Nine games will be aired on the 2024-25 season’s opening weekend, beginning on Friday, August 9. Fixtures over those first four days include Leeds against Portsmouth (a newly-promoted side owned by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner) in the Championship, Wrexham’s first third-tier game since 2005 against Wycombe Wanderers and Birmingham’s match in the same division against Reading, as well as Burnley’s Monday night visit to Luton Town — a meeting of two teams relegated from the Premier League last season.

For CBS, it represents their latest significant investment in football, having secured vast coverage of the Champions League, Europa League and the NWSL, the top level of the women’s club game in the States. It has been the most recent U.S. home of Italy’s Serie A, with supporters waiting to learn whether the Italian league will be broadcast on CBS again in the coming season.

Dan Weinberg, executive vice-president at CBS Sports, tells The Athletic: “We’re all pumped up about this EFL deal. It’s been a target of ours for a little while. There’s a lot of pedigree and history here. Any time you look at a league that’s over 130 years old, it raises your eyebrows. You’re talking about passionate fanbases — some of the oldest in the sport. We really like that aspect of it.

“We also really like the Carabao Cup. The format really resonates in this country. The one-and-done format, in the U.S. market, people love: there’s 92 clubs (in that competition) and everybody’s got a shot. So you have that underdog mentality and you have the presence of the Premier League clubs, which we know drive engagement, audience and high visibility matches for us as we get later on in the tournament.

“Then you talk about the last week or two of the season when you have teams fighting for promotion and relegation — that’s drama. We really plan to lean in on this. Then there is (the Championship play-off final), which has been described as the richest match in all of European soccer (because of the finances involved in being promoted to the Premier League). Those kinds of stakes are really exciting and something that we can spotlight.”

CBS intends to finalise its studio talent and commentary teams in the coming weeks. The CBS studio show for the Champions League, anchored by Kate Abdo and featuring Thierry Henry, Jamie Carragher and Micah Richards, has owned the global conversation on social media in recent years. Can we expect to see similarly ambitious offerings for the EFL coverage?

Weinberg says: “What you’ve seen over the last years is that soccer, as a sport category, has become increasingly important to CBS Sports. We’ve had extraordinary success with our Champions League coverage, but not just specific to the Champions League. The way we’ve covered the sport has been really well received, and the way we’ll cover this property will fall under the larger umbrella of how we cover the sport.

“We’re excited about it. What we’ve heard is really positive feedback from fans in Europe. And given that we’re a U.S.-based show and we’re covering it from the U.S. market, that’s been really exciting to us.”

(Top photo: Southampton win last season’s Championship play-off final; Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

Adam Crafton covers football for The Athletic. He previously wrote for the Daily Mail. In 2018, he was named the Young Sports Writer of the Year by the Sports' Journalist Association. His debut book,"From Guernica to Guardiola", charting the influence of Spaniards in English football, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2018. He is based in London.