The ACC Network hasn’t launched without hiccups. Major carriers like Comcast and ATT Uverse have yet to sign on.
We told earlier this month, that ATT Uverse may not sign on when we spoke with @billgarrity3
I have U-verse and that may be a problem. AT&T has planned to phase it out and push those customers to DirecTV since they bought the latter.
So it’s not that surprising ATT Uverse is holding out.
For providers that do carry the channel, there has been confusion about which packages and channels the ACC Network is on. I may be one of the few that couldn’t complain. For me, Charter Spectrum launched the channel on time, the streaming ACC network was working by the weekend, and I lowered my bill by $40 with a new package.
It hasn’t been perfect, but the reality is the ACC Network was the second best conference / team network launch in history.
The SEC Network had a near flawless launch, but that is the reality not the exception. Let’s look at some previous conference / team network launches.
The Pac 12 continues to struggle with distribution per Mercury News.
With just 17.9 million subscribers (per Kagan), the Pac-12 Networks will have fewer subscribers in 2019 than The Pursuit Channel, The Sportsman Channel, Fox Deportes and Z Living, according to Nielsen cable coverage estimates from the fall.
The Longhorn Network lost money for years to tune of nearly $50 Million in it’s first 5 years per Saturday Down South.
Meanwhile, LHN reaches between 7.5 million and 20 million, depending on whether you trust the SNL Kagan study or ESPN.
The Big 10 network launched more than 10 years, but we’ve forgotten how difficult that launch was. SportsBusinessDaily wrote an article about the Big 10 Network survival story.
When BTN launched in August 2007 without deals from Comcast and Time Warner, fans were irate. Athletic directors were forced to come up with PR plans and messaging to help their fans understand why they couldn’t get the channel and what they could do about it.
“We’d be walking into a stadium during that first season and fans would boo us because they couldn’t see the network,” BTN and Fox analyst Charles Davis said.
From Awful Announcing’s recent article on the ACC Network.
The addition of Cox’s subscribers here also means that ACC Network now has deals with companies that collectively cover around 52 million potential subscribers
Carriage agreements are already in place for the ACC Network with : Cox, Dish, DIRECTV, Google Fiber, Hulu Live TV, Optimum, PlayStation Vue, Spectrum TV, Sling, Suddenlink, TVision, Verizon Fios and YouTube TV as well as a number of regional providers.
When you put the ACC Network’s launch into a historical perspective vs previous launches, the ACC Network went pretty well… maybe even better than expected.
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