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IT’S CRITICAL THAT OUR CONFERENCE IN THIS KIND OF RELATIONSHIP CAN BE NIMBLE AND ADJUST TO THE CHANGING TECHNOLOGY, AND USE IT TO OUR ADVANTAGE MOVING FORWARD. WE ARE NOW WELL-POSITIONED FOR THAT. THE WORLD MAY LOOK VERY DIFFERENT OVER THE NEXT 12 YEARS.
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—JOHN SWOFFORD, ACC COMMISSIONER
broadcasting rights throughout the course of the contract. Since it first signed a syndication deal for individual sports in the mid-1980s, the ACC has split all of its television revenue equally among its members. The new deal will continue to do so. While the new contract brings some exciting new changes to all ACC sports, some of the league’s most popular features will remain. ESPN will continue to broadcast five ACC Thursday night football games. It plans to continue the popular ACC-Big 10 Challenge in men’s and women’s basketball, and the full lineup of Sunday Night Hoops, with start times ranging between 2 p.m.-6 p.m. Those games, broadcast on ESPNU, will reach 73 million households, a significant increase over the expiring television deal. Unlike some of its other deals, the ESPN contract with the ACC gives the network exclusive rights for football and basketball on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN3.com, as well as the network’s specialized packages
like ESPN Mobile TV, ESPN Full Court, ESPN International and ESPN Classic. Combined, those networks reach nearly 450 million households. “This is the first time we at ESPN have done basically an all-in deal with a conference where we worked to be able to acquire all of its product,” Skipper said. “I think that speaks to how much we value the ACC. “That was an important component to us because we value both basketball and football. We liked having them synched-up.” The ACC office considered developing its own network, as the SEC and Big Ten have done, but decided in the end that it would be better to partner with ESPN’s long-term broadcasting experience, its national exposure and its internationally known brand. While ESPN will own exclusive broadcast rights to all conference-controlled events, the league will continue its long-time relationship with Raycom Sports, which has owned sole syndication rights for football and basketball
broadcasts for more than three decades. Raycom will continue to regionally broadcast games, including weekly football and basketball broadcasts and the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament. It will also syndicate ACC games outside the region, taking national the excitement of conference basketball and football games that had previously been unavailable outside the region. It will also distribute the league’s digital assets through the league’s official website, www.theACC. com, and manage the league’s corporate partner program. Swofford is convinced that the deal will offer fans of the ACC’s 12 schools unprecedented access to see their teams in action, on a variety of platforms, for a dozen years to come. “It’s critical that our conference in this kind of relationship can be nimble and adjust to the changing technology, and use it to our advantage moving forward,” Swofford said. “We are now well-positioned for that. The world may look very different over the next 12 years.” 2011 ACC BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT 21