The ACC Network is on its way. At a news conference Thursday to start the ACC Kickoff media event, commissioner John Swofford was joined by league athletic directors and coaches and ESPN executives in patting each other on the back and touting the partnership as historic, monumental and a great moment for the conference.
The network will launch in August 2019 and will carry 450 live events annually, including 40 regular-season football games and more than 150 men’s and women’s basketball games, as well as news and information shows and original programming. As part of the agreement, the ACC will expand its basketball regular-season schedule to 20 conference games, up from 18. That increase will take place in 2019-20 when the network opens for business.
The agreement was ratified by league presidents, athletic directors and faculty-athletic representatives in late June. For teams and schools, the network will bring added exposure and revenue.
“We’re in a competitive situation with our peers around the country, and we want to make sure that we’re doing the things that are going to allow us to be looked as continuing to be one of those premier athletic conferences,” Georgia Tech Athletic Director Mike Bobinski said. “This is a piece of the puzzle.”
A nine-game conference schedule for football was part of the negotiation, Bobinski said.
“There’s a desire for us to continue to discuss it, and we’ll do that, but it wasn’t anything that required us to do so,” he said.
ESPN will also stream a digital live-events channel, called “ACC Network Extra,” starting in August. Available to customers who have access to ESPN3 via WatchESPN and the ESPN app, the digital network will broadcast more than 600 live events annually.
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