The ACC is in a potential revenue dilemma yet again.

With the bowl season going on  the last 2 weeks, we’ve been mostly focused on the game results. With a 4-6 bowl record, it hasn’t been a stellar bowl season for the ACC.

There was a story from a couple of weeks, that we wanted to address though.

ACCPerscription tells us about a potential television rights deal for the SEC that would increase SEC team revenue by a whopping $20 Million per team per year. This is the CBS deal for for the SEC’s top football games, that are up for renegotiation.

This was after Big 10 signed a short-term 6 year deal with the ESPN/FOX which increased their Television rights revenues to to over $50 Million a year per Forbes.com.

With the current increases in revenues, the Big 10 will be renegotiating another deal by the mid 2020s, and by all accounts will get another significant increase.

I expect the SEC will follow suit with their new football deal to be fairly short term so they can renegotiate in less than 10 years.

The ACC’s rights are signed through the 2035-2036 season, and that’s a problem. While the ACC Network will increase revenue for the ACC by $5 – $10 Million a year, the ACC is largely handcuffed for additional revenue sources, while the Big 10 and SEC portioned their rights or parts of them for frequent negotiation.

Nearly 10 years ago the ACC tackled the revenue dilemma by starting a network, but what are the options now?

Frankly they are rather limited.

Notre Dame’s deal with NBC runs out in 2025, and pays them $15 Million a year.  That’s 7 home games a year for the Irish, plus the additional conference games. If the Irish were to join the ACC, then you expand with another team – possibly a Big 12 team like West Virginia that geographically makes sense.

This is the best scenario, but it seems doubtful as Notre Dame is so in love with their outdated independent model they prefer to make less money, and not be competitive at the highest levels of football.

The ACC could try expansion again with 2 other teams, to renegotiate their contract. In either case I would increase language for frequent negotiations. There are rumored lookins in the current contract, but it hasn’t seemed to result in many increases. Also with football outside of Clemson at BCS levels, that isn’t helping.

You can increase number of conference games to 9 which would help with inventory, but I don’t think it will help much with the current state of football.

The ACC may have to think outside the box, and form some alliances with the other 2 Power 5 conference that are in near as desperate revenue state – the Big 12 and Pac 12.

Far too often the ACC, Big 12, and Pac 12 have tied their agreements (like bowls) with the Big 10 and SEC. Why do this every time?

The ACC, Big 12, Pac 12 should form scheduling agreements in all sports which would increase quality inventory for all conferences.

Pitch it to ESPN and FOX… and see what happens, then create short term deals.

The ACC has about 4 years to work on this, before the SEC deal starts new. If they do nothing, then the chaos of 2010-2012 will repeat itself at some point in the future.

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