ESPN and the ACC announced Thursday a 12-year, $1.86 billion deal to broadcast football, men's and women's basketball, Olympic sports and all conference championships.
ESPN reportedly will pay as much as $155 million per year for the league's rights for 12 years, beginning in 2011-12. The ACC's previous separate deals for football and basketball, which expire after the 2010-11 season, pay the conference between $67 and 75 million per year. Neither ESPN nor the ACC would confirm the contract amount, citing a confidentiality clause.
The deal, which took 15 months to negotiate and is the first time that the ACC has packaged football and basketball, accomplishes three things:
- It increases the average annual TV revenues per school from $5.4 million to an estimated $11.9 million. The $155 million per year total would be the third-highest among conferences, trailing the Big Ten (a reported $242 million) and SEC (a reported $205 million).
- It gives the ACC a national media footprint in football and basketball, something that it didn't have in the previous deal because of cable restrictions. Almost 5,000 games in all of the conference's sports will be shown across a variety of ESPN networks and/or Raycom.
- Financial stability for the conference in uncertain times, which ACC commissioner John Swofford and ESPN vice president of content John Skipper repeatedly brought up during a teleconference Thursday.
"The financial and exposure aspects of this, as well as the opportunities for new medias going forward, only increases the stability," Swofford said. "Schools will more than double the TV revenues they have received in the past, which is significant in today’s world."
Highlights of the football deal include national games on Saturday afternoons and evenings, the Thursday night games that have become popular, a Labor Day game and the conference championship game. Raycom also would be able to syndicate games nationally. The ACC will retain rights to its archives.
Basketball details include national broadcasts of Duke-North Carolina and national broadcasts of all ESPN games. In the past, there were regional blackouts for some games. There will be a weekly show on Sundays on ESPNU, and every conference game will be televised on either ESPN or Raycom, or both.
"The work that the conference office and commissioner Swofford has done is fantastic," Tech athletics director Dan Radakovich said. "This contract will allow the ACC and our member institutions to compete at a high level. The distribution of our athletic events by our partner ESPN/ABC will continue to enhance the reputation of our schools and showcase our student athletes."
The conference-realignment circus that dominated the news recently didn't affect the negotiations between ACC and ESPN because most of the details already were decided. However, should the ACC's composition change during the next 12 years, there is a clause in the contract that allows for re-negotiation.
Skipper said the ACC's tradition was one of the factors that made this an attractive deal.
"It’s clear the ACC is a very sound conference, not likely to change," Skipper said.
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