Fox bows out of Holiday Bowl, lone bowl game on network’s schedule

The Holiday Bowl will be looking for a new broadcast partner this upcoming season.

Fox Sports, which has televised the game each season since 2017, will reportedly not bid on rights for the Holiday Bowl this season, according to college football insider Brett McMurphy of On3. The bowl game will now take its rights to market in search of another broadcaster. However, ESPN, which telecasts the vast majority of college football bowl games and broadcast the Holiday Bowl from 1986 to 2016, is also not interested in the game.

Without Fox and ESPN in the mix, focus now turns to other potential broadcast partners. CBS could find itself in the mix; the network also has rights to the Sun Bowl, which it has aired every year since 1968. TNT Sports might show interest as well; the network has waded into college football with a sublicense of the College Football Playoff and a package of Big 12 and Mountain West games. Or a network like The CW, which has aired the Arizona Bowl in each of the past three seasons, could look to nab the Holiday Bowl.

With Fox opting not to renew its partnership for the Holiday Bowl, the network’s college football season will now conclude the final week of the regular season. It seems the network is now putting its focus into expanding the College Football Playoff with the hopes of securing a portion of a larger format. Last week, Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks endorsed a 24-team CFP format.

The market for the Holiday Bowl should be a decent indication for the health of the rest of the non-CFP bowl games. Bowls continue to be solid viewership draws in December and January, but have often become watered down as players opt-out of participation, or simply enter the transfer portal before the game is played.