College football is the second highest-rated TV programming in the U.S., behind only the NFL. A dozen schools’ games consistently produce NFL-like numbers at 4 million to 10 million-plus viewers. College football generates $3.9 billion in media rights, and … it is underperforming.

With its recent deals, the NBA leveraged competitive bidding, great demographics, and its (non-football season) spring primacy to dunk all others at $3.04 rights per viewer hour (RPVH). Meanwhile, audience growth with Nielsen’s Big Data actually drove NFL’s RPVH down to just $1.30. Hence, the NFL is reopening its deals (and potentially expanding to 18 games). We forecast this will increase the NFL’s RPVH by about 50% to $1.95 (once phased in). That’s 82% higher than college football’s $1.07 today.

Why is college football so popular, yet relatively undervalued? Mainly, it’s that the NFL and NBA negotiate and coordinate their national media rights centrally. With financial pressures in college sports, the need for a new single-seller approach to maximize football’s media opportunities becomes critical. Indeed, Sports Broadcasting Act revisions are in discussion.

A professional single seller negotiating college football media rights (similar to how the CFP is handled) could strategically optimize media planning, improve the schedule, launch valuable new products and increase bargaining leverage, enabling the sport to maximize its rights. In 1999, NASCAR shifted to be a single seller, centralizing all media rights previously held separately by tracks, then achieved 4X revenue growth. It wasn’t an accident (pun intended).

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