Tournament of Roses President Mark Leavens detailed the impact during remarks at the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce Presidents Breakfast on Dec. 4, as the Rose Bowl prepares to host a College Football Playoff quarterfinal on Jan. 1.
“This year’s Rose Bowl game will be our hundred-twelfth Rose Bowl game. It will be a College Football Playoff quarterfinal game,” Leavens said. “And as anyone who’s a fan of college football knows, there’s been a tremendous amount of change in college football in recent years.”
Leavens said the game’s kickoff time will shift this year to 1 p.m. Pacific — one hour earlier than tradition — a change driven by television concerns.
“We each moved up one hour because ESPN, our partner, was losing a significant amount of their advertising revenues,” Leavens said. “The viewers on the East Coast tuned off on the last game of the day as they passed midnight on the East coast.”
He added, “While changing that game time one hour may not seem like a big deal… that one hour difference is a big deal and we’ve had teams working on that change.”
Leavens said this season will also mark the final year of the Rose Bowl’s long-standing financial structure tied directly to ESPN, the Pac-12 and the Big Ten.
“This game on January 1st is the final year that the Rose Bowl Game will be tied to our long-held agreement between the Tournament of Roses, the PAC-12 conference and the Big 10 Conference,” he said.
After last year’s game, the Tournament passed $44.8 million each to the Pac-12 and the Big Ten. Similar distributions are expected after the Jan. 1, 2026 game. Leavens said those conference distributions have totaled more than $1.7 billion over the past 50 years.
But beginning with the Jan. 1, 2027 Rose Bowl, the Tournament of Roses will no longer hold its own direct broadcast agreement with ESPN. Instead, the College Football Playoff will manage all television rights for its six playoff bowl games, including the Rose Bowl, and will also oversee how broadcast revenue is distributed to conferences and universities.
Under the new structure, the Tournament will receive a standardized management fee from the CFP rather than negotiating its own media deal.
Tournament officials said that fee will be significantly lower than what the Rose Bowl historically earned under its direct ESPN contract, forcing the organization to adjust its operations and revenue strategy going forward.
Leavens said the financial shift beginning in 2027 will be significant.
“Our current operating budget is about $20 million,” he said. “Our new management fee that we will receive… is going to be $3 to $5 million less than we had previously been receiving.”
“So when you take away 25% of our operating budget, that’s going to be a significant hit to the Tournament of Roses,” Leavens said.
In response, the Tournament is adjusting operations, adding new ticketed events, expanding parade livestreaming and establishing an endowment to stabilize long-term finances.
“We’ve known the changes are coming and our Tournament leadership has been actively working on adjusting our new financial reality,” Leavens said.
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