Notre Dame, USC to renew rivalry in 2030 after failed neutral-site talks with Netflix
© MICHAEL CLUBB/SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
After efforts from longtime rivals Notre Dame and USC to sell a neutral-site game to Netflix fell apart last year, the two schools could not find a path forward to schedule each other, leaving the series on hiatus.
According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, that hiatus won’t last long.
Per Thamel, the Fighting Irish and Trojans will renew their rivalry via a home-and-home series starting in 2030. The first game will be played in Los Angeles with a return game scheduled for South Bend the following season.
NEWS: USC and Notre Dame will renew their rivalry, with the series starting again in 2030. They’ll meet Week 1 in LA that year and play Week 1 in South Bend the next year.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) August 3, 2026
In May, the Los Angeles Times first reported that Notre Dame and USC were still in active talks to renew the rivalry, with one major sticking point being USC’s desire to play earlier in the season rather than in its traditional October or November slot. Ultimately, USC got its wish, and the games will be played in Week 1 of the 2030 and 2031 seasons. The deal, which will also include matchups in 2032 and 2033, did not specify when the last two games will be played.
One could presume that Fox, the lead broadcast partner for the Big Ten, would be in line to broadcast the 2030 contest in Southern California in what would be the final season of the conference’s current media rights agreements. The 2031 game in South Bend is theoretically up for grabs; NBC’s current broadcast deal with Notre Dame expires following the 2029 season, though the network has partnered with the Fighting Irish in every season since 1991.
Media rights were central to the rivalry series going on hiatus in the first place. Last September, when reports first surfaced that the teams had approached Netflix about selling the game’s broadcast rights to the streamer, networks balked at losing such a valuable matchup. The workaround, as we recently saw Duke basketball implement to mixed success in a deal with Prime Video, was to schedule the game at a neutral site, where neither team’s media partners had contractual rights to telecast it.
That didn’t pan out, and now the two teams are left with a four-year gap between games, ending what was a 78-year streak (excluding the pandemic-impacted 2020 season) of matchups.
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