It was a good year for the ACC. Not only did Florida State win the BCS national championship and Clemson add another BCS bowl victory, but the conference saw a nice jump in revenue. According to a report from ESPN.com, the ACC saw revenue jump $56.6 million over the previous year, giving the conference a record $291.7 million in total revenue for the 2012-13 fiscal year.
Why the spike in revenue? Expansion, of course. The ACC officially welcomed Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Notre Dame to the conference, bringing the conference membership to 14 members in football and 15 members in other sports (Notre Dame does not participate in ACC football as a full conference member). With expansion comes an opportunity to renegotiate media rights deals. For the ACC, that meant a chance to capitalize on some new markets and the national brand recognition that comes with Notre Dame and Syracuse basketball. It will be interesting to see if the ACC can work any new negotiations once Louisville joins and Maryland leaves, unless that has already been accounted for under the new deal.
According to the ESPN.com report, each school in the ACC will receive a share valued at $20.8 million, which is up roughly $1.2 million from the previous year. Notre Dame’s slice of the revenue will be different, probably slightly less, although how that split is structured is unknown.
Why is that significant? The share each ACC school will be comparable to the shares received by members of the SEC, which was previously reported to be $20.9 million. One thing could continue to separate the SEC and ACC though, as the SEC is expected to see a jump in revenue and larger shares a year from now following the launch of the SEC Network. The ACC would likely love to have a similar network deal, and the topic has been discussed with partners at ESPN, but that is far down the line at best.
While these numbers are very good for the ACC, the conference is still behind the other power conferences when it comes to revenue. The Pac-12 remains on top.2012-13 revenue by conference looks like this: Pac-12: $334m B1G: $318m SEC: $314m ACC: $291m Big 12: $198m
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) June 6, 2014Follow @KevinOnCFB