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May
20
2023

Unpacking ESPN’s @ADavidHaleJoint tweets about the future of the ACC.

When it comes to ACC realignment news, to be honest, I ignore about 99% of it. It’s usually wrong frankly, and a waste of time.

When someone like ESPN’s @ADavidHaleJoint or @aadelsonESPN among a few others I pay attention to talk about the ACC, now I’ll take notice.

David Hale recently released a tweet thread with his take on the future of the ACC. It was a lot to unpack, but it’s worth your time to read. Let’s hit the highlights, and give our take.

ok, this is interesting… If Oregon and Washington don’t add value to the ACC’s (lacking) base media deal, just how exactly is a large majority if every one of the ACC schools not dilutive to the mega deals of the SEC and Big 10? I’m not saying the SEC and Big 10 won’t expand at some time, but the more the numbers come in the more I think we’re approaching a saturation point where those conferences stop at 16 members for several years maybe longer, and at 18 eventually.

The Fishbait comment is interesting. ACC Commissioner Jim Philips isn’t one for exaggeration, and he seemed more optimistic about the work Fishbait was doing than other topics.

I’ve made this point over and over. ESPN has an incentive to work with the ACC and remember that FSU AD Mike Alford said he was looking to stay competitive. ESPN isn’t reworking the whole deal,  but if the future gap is $30 – $40 Million, and you’ve been working with a $10-15 Million gap for years then the approach is to cut the gap a little more than half. At some point, ESPN could rework the deal to add $5-10 Million a year, Why- millions of reasons.

Then you incrementally work towards the additional $10 Million. Remember in the ACC’s most recent tax returns their distribution was close to an average of $40 Million per ACC school, and that was still without Comcast’s full distribution value added or in a few years the end of the ill-fated Raycom deal, that is estimated to add $3-5 Million back to the ACC schools per year. 

Don’t get me wrong the task is still daunting, but it’s like being down 14 in the 4th quarter rather 28.

This is the one point, I don’t really agree with Hale’s logic. Every good idea gets copied, it’s the value of being first and getting the benefit for some time. Remember the Big 10 was first on their network, and the SEC came years later, and then the ACC. Also if the ACC presidents had voted for their own ACC Network when they had the chance in 2008-2009 – maybe things would be different now. As a second example, the SEC was first with the conference championship game before others followed suit later. I don’t imagine Fishbait has anything that lucrative, but that doesn’t mean they may not have an interesting idea looming.

This looks sobering, but it’s also exactly what we said last year when Andrea Adelson analyzed the grant of rights. 

As we’ve said on the blog several times, the ACC’s GOR will make it very difficult for any ACC program to leave in the relatively short term. I consider a relatively short term at least 5 years

We’re still looking at 3-5  years since 2022 for anyone to potentially challenge this GOR which is the earliest timeline we anticipated.

Where Jim Phillips needs to concentrate is attacking this in steps by incremental increases, not just catching the Big 10/SEC  close the gap, get it to that somewhat manageable level to make a challenge to the GOR early less likely.

Of course, at the end of the day, this all depends on whether the Big 10 and SEC choose to expand. It’s their world financially and the rest of college athletics is just playing in it.

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