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Here’s why those complaints are short-sighted:
# Absent Notre Dame, there might not well be an ACC Network. Its name was a driving force in ESPN exploring the project, a development that quickly led to the conference’s 2013 grant of media rights, which bound members to the league through 2027 – the grant has since been extended through 2036.
# If the Irish forgo football independence, the ACC would be the program’s contracted destination. Think that league could fetch some TV dollars?
# Agreeing to share ACC Network profits equally with Notre Dame hardly qualifies as financial hardship for the conference’s 14 full members. Nor does it create disincentive for the Irish to join the league for football.
Network will make ACC 'very, very competitive financially'
Since football drives about 80 percent of major conferences’ television money, Notre Dame receives one-fifth, 20 percent, of a full share of the league’s guaranteed rights fees, a fair and mathematically sound arrangement.
That ratio is reflected in the ACC’s most recent tax return, for fiscal 2014-15.
The conference distributed $373,162,899 to its 15 schools, about 55 percent of which came from television rights fees. So Notre Dame received $6.2 million, less than one-fourth of the $26.21 million the league’s other members pocketed, on average.
Had the Irish been due a full share of all ACC revenue, the average per-school distribution in 2014-15 would have been $24.88 million, $1.33 million less for the other 14 members.
As long as Notre Dame remains a football independent, that one-fifth of a full share of guaranteed TV money does not -- repeat, does NOT -- change.
Also understand that since the Irish began ACC competition in 2013-14, the conference’s guaranteed television revenue has increased 48.6 percent, from $146.6 million to $217.9 million. Not all of that is attributable to Notre Dame, but its presence sure helped.
Some believe allowing the Irish a full cut of ACC Network money removes incentive for them becoming full league members. But only College Football Playoff exclusion for lacking a conference championship, and certainly not the relatively tame per-school distributions the network might produce, would prompt such a decision.
Now let’s examine what dividing non-guaranteed ACC Network windfalls means for the Irish and the rest of the conference.
Start with a wildly optimistic projection that come 2019-20, the ACC Network will be as successful as the SEC Network is today, netting each member, including Notre Dame, $8 million. Were that $120 million total ($8 million x 15 schools) distributed like the guaranteed rights fees, the Irish would receive $1.6 million, the 14 other schools $8.46 million.
In that scenario, agreeing to give Notre Dame a full share of ACC Network profits would “cost” the other 14 members $460,000 each, or about 0.5 percent of an athletic department’s annual budget.
But let’s ratchet down initial ACC Network revenue to a more realistic $75 million, or $5 million per school. Distributing that money like the conference does guaranteed rights fees would translate to $1 million for Notre Dame, $5.29 million for everyone else, a difference of $290,000.
Trust me, having the Irish in the league, and locked in by a grant of media rights through 2035-36, is worth a heck of a lot more to their ACC colleagues than $460,000 apiece, let alone $290,000.
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One way to make an SEC/ACC merger work ... -- El Paso Hokie 07/27/2021 01:51AM
