Thursday, October 24

ACC backs plan to supply elevated payouts to colleges for postseason success

The Atlantic Coast Conference is transferring ahead permitting colleges to earn more cash generated from their very own postseason performances, a transfer coming because the league tries to seek out methods to shut a rising monetary hole with two power-conference friends.

The ACC introduced Wednesday that its board of administrators have endorsed a “success incentive initiative,” with particulars being labored out within the coming months for implementation for the 2024-25 season. The league has lengthy distributed income evenly amongst its membership, together with cash coming from revenue-generating postseason occasions just like the College Football Playoff and the NCAA males’s basketball match.

The timing of the change would coincide with CFP enlargement to 12 groups. The remainder of the equal revenue-distribution construction – which might cowl cash tied to an ESPN TV contract working by 2036 – stays unchanged.

In a press release, Duke president Vincent E. Price stated league management continues to be “dedicated to exploring all potential alternatives that may end in further revenues and sources for the convention.

“Today’s decision provides a path to reward athletic success while also distributing additional revenue to the full membership,” stated Price, the board’s chairman.

The transfer comes after a long-running collection of discussions by the ACC, from commissioner Jim Phillips speaking brazenly quite a few occasions about evaluating methods to generate extra income to latest spring conferences in Florida the place the subject was a transparent precedence amongst directors.

That’s as a result of the ACC is falling farther behind the Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences even because the ACC continues to generate its personal document income hauls.

For instance, the league reported a document $578.3 million in whole income for the 2020-21 season whereas distributing a median of $36.1 million per college. Yet the SEC reported practically $833.4 million in income and a median distribution of $54.6 million for that very same season, whereas the Big Ten checked in at $679.8 million and a median $47.9 million payout.

That has fueled hypothesis concerning the long-term well being of the ACC in a time of realignment, although the grant-of-rights provision within the ESPN deal – signed in 2016 to finally launch the league’s personal TV channel – affords a major impediment.

It means the league controls media rights for any college that makes an attempt to depart throughout the contract, which might deter defections since a college wouldn’t have the ability to carry TV worth to a brand new league.

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