David Teel of The Daily Press:
"The ACC rarely kicks off a football season with multiple conference games. The ACC has never tipped off a men’s basketball season with a full complement of league contests.
Next year’s launch of the ACC Network figures to change those scheduling norms.
Presiding over his 22nd preseason ACC football gathering, commissioner John Swofford revealed those programming details, and more, during a one-on-one interview Wednesday afternoon.
Swofford also addressed ACC Network distribution, financial projections and the revenue gap his member schools are fighting against their Power Five peers.
ESPN, crave a splashy debut. So why not schedule accordingly?
Swofford cemented Wednesday that the ACC will stage multiple league games to start next football season. He didn’t reveal matchups, but based on non-conference contracts already in place, the most likely candidates are Virginia Tech at Boston College, Georgia Tech at Clemson and Pittsburgh versus Syracuse or Virginia.
Power Five leagues generally avoid Week One conference games. There are only two this season — Northwestern at Purdue in the Big Ten, and Virginia Tech at Florida State in the ACC — and there was only one in 2017: Ohio State-Indiana in the Big Ten.
“There will be some conference games in Week One,” Swofford said, “and there will be some high-profile games during the course of the season that you might expect to be on ABC that will be on the ACC Network in all probability, in both football and men’s basketball. And that could continue.”
Most notably, Swofford said the ACC is seriously considering playing seven conference men’s basketball games, spread over multiple days, to start the 2019-20 season, and beyond. One of the league’s 15 teams would have a bye, perhaps Duke — which, along with Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan State, competes in November’s annual Champions Classic.
“It would be exciting in terms of a new network,” Swofford said, “and would bring people to the network right at the beginning of the season. … I think fans would be into it both from a network standpoint as well as from a competition standpoint.
“If we could arrange it where almost every school played, that would be a heck of a way to start the basketball season. It would have a tremendous pop to it.”
Given football’s fall dominance, heaven knows college basketball needs a November pop.
Swofford said ACC coaches would “be fine with it, particularly if everybody’s playing a conference game right (at the start). Then it’s equal, it’s fair. I think they understand the attention it would bring to the league. … It could be something very special.”
Virginia opened the 1960-61 season with then-ACC rival Maryland and in 1979-80 versus league newcomer Georgia Tech. North Carolina, N.C. State, Wake Forest and Duke used to play two nights of doubleheaders against one another — the event was called the Big Four — to start the season in Greensboro, N.C., though the results did not count in the ACC standings.
A full complement of conference games to start the season would be unprecedented for the ACC. It would also help manage a league schedule that expands from 18 to 20 games per team in 2019-20, this to coincide with the network’s launch.
Swofford said new ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro, with whom he met this spring in Texas, is as committed to the ACC Network project as his predecessor, Swofford’s confidant and fellow North Carolina graduate John Skipper.
According to their most recent tax returns, for fiscal 2016-17, the ACC’s revenue trailed the Southeastern Conference’s by $232 million and the Big Ten’s by $95 million, unsustainable gaps long-term. Fueling the disparities are the SEC Network, launched in 2014, also in conjunction with ESPN, and the Big Ten Network, launched in 2007.
“This is our approach to closing that gap,” Swofford said. “The SEC Network was probably an anomaly in the sense it got to its max very quickly, unlike the Big Ten Network and certainly unlike the Pac-12 Networks. And we’ve based our (revenue) projections very realistically and conservatively.”
Naturally, Swofford declines to share projections.
“Obviously the sooner the better,” he said of closing the gap, “and that’s based on distribution. Distribution’s often based on content, so we need to have the best content generally speaking that we can have on the ACC channel. And that’s how both ESPN and the ACC maximize the business proposition.”
Like the SEC, the ACC will have the power of ESPN’s parent company, Disney, to leverage cable providers into carrying its network. If a cable outfit balks at the ACC Network, Disney can withhold Disney Junior.
“I don’t think anybody can (leverage) better than Disney and ESPN,” Swofford said. “That’s a tough world … and a lot of times things go right down to the midnight hour, and it did even with the SEC Network.”
Despite revenue shortcomings, ACC schools continue to thrive in football, men’s basketball and Olympic sports.
“If you have more assets to help you get there, that’s all well and good,” Swofford said. “But … if it were solely about who has the most gold, so to speak, Ohio State, Texas and Florida would win everything. And now maybe Texas A&M. …
“And there a lot of different sources of revenue. Sometimes we write so much about conference revenues, we forget the importance of the individual schools and the revenues that they can self-generate. Because when you look at the schools that are generating the most money, it’s not just television money. It’s tickets sold, it’s contributions, it’s a lot of different things. …
“Conference distributions are important, there’s no question about that, but that’s not the end-all, be-all.”
Here’s how important: In 2016-17, an ACC distribution north of $26 million accounted for approximately 30 percent of Virginia Tech’s $87.4 million in revenue.
And for enhancing conference revenue, the ACC Network is paramount."
"The ACC rarely kicks off a football season with multiple conference games. The ACC has never tipped off a men’s basketball season with a full complement of league contests.
Next year’s launch of the ACC Network figures to change those scheduling norms.
Presiding over his 22nd preseason ACC football gathering, commissioner John Swofford revealed those programming details, and more, during a one-on-one interview Wednesday afternoon.
Swofford also addressed ACC Network distribution, financial projections and the revenue gap his member schools are fighting against their Power Five peers.
ESPN, crave a splashy debut. So why not schedule accordingly?
Swofford cemented Wednesday that the ACC will stage multiple league games to start next football season. He didn’t reveal matchups, but based on non-conference contracts already in place, the most likely candidates are Virginia Tech at Boston College, Georgia Tech at Clemson and Pittsburgh versus Syracuse or Virginia.
Power Five leagues generally avoid Week One conference games. There are only two this season — Northwestern at Purdue in the Big Ten, and Virginia Tech at Florida State in the ACC — and there was only one in 2017: Ohio State-Indiana in the Big Ten.
“There will be some conference games in Week One,” Swofford said, “and there will be some high-profile games during the course of the season that you might expect to be on ABC that will be on the ACC Network in all probability, in both football and men’s basketball. And that could continue.”
Most notably, Swofford said the ACC is seriously considering playing seven conference men’s basketball games, spread over multiple days, to start the 2019-20 season, and beyond. One of the league’s 15 teams would have a bye, perhaps Duke — which, along with Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan State, competes in November’s annual Champions Classic.
“It would be exciting in terms of a new network,” Swofford said, “and would bring people to the network right at the beginning of the season. … I think fans would be into it both from a network standpoint as well as from a competition standpoint.
“If we could arrange it where almost every school played, that would be a heck of a way to start the basketball season. It would have a tremendous pop to it.”
Given football’s fall dominance, heaven knows college basketball needs a November pop.
Swofford said ACC coaches would “be fine with it, particularly if everybody’s playing a conference game right (at the start). Then it’s equal, it’s fair. I think they understand the attention it would bring to the league. … It could be something very special.”
Virginia opened the 1960-61 season with then-ACC rival Maryland and in 1979-80 versus league newcomer Georgia Tech. North Carolina, N.C. State, Wake Forest and Duke used to play two nights of doubleheaders against one another — the event was called the Big Four — to start the season in Greensboro, N.C., though the results did not count in the ACC standings.
A full complement of conference games to start the season would be unprecedented for the ACC. It would also help manage a league schedule that expands from 18 to 20 games per team in 2019-20, this to coincide with the network’s launch.
Swofford said new ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro, with whom he met this spring in Texas, is as committed to the ACC Network project as his predecessor, Swofford’s confidant and fellow North Carolina graduate John Skipper.
According to their most recent tax returns, for fiscal 2016-17, the ACC’s revenue trailed the Southeastern Conference’s by $232 million and the Big Ten’s by $95 million, unsustainable gaps long-term. Fueling the disparities are the SEC Network, launched in 2014, also in conjunction with ESPN, and the Big Ten Network, launched in 2007.
“This is our approach to closing that gap,” Swofford said. “The SEC Network was probably an anomaly in the sense it got to its max very quickly, unlike the Big Ten Network and certainly unlike the Pac-12 Networks. And we’ve based our (revenue) projections very realistically and conservatively.”
Naturally, Swofford declines to share projections.
“Obviously the sooner the better,” he said of closing the gap, “and that’s based on distribution. Distribution’s often based on content, so we need to have the best content generally speaking that we can have on the ACC channel. And that’s how both ESPN and the ACC maximize the business proposition.”
Like the SEC, the ACC will have the power of ESPN’s parent company, Disney, to leverage cable providers into carrying its network. If a cable outfit balks at the ACC Network, Disney can withhold Disney Junior.
“I don’t think anybody can (leverage) better than Disney and ESPN,” Swofford said. “That’s a tough world … and a lot of times things go right down to the midnight hour, and it did even with the SEC Network.”
Despite revenue shortcomings, ACC schools continue to thrive in football, men’s basketball and Olympic sports.
“If you have more assets to help you get there, that’s all well and good,” Swofford said. “But … if it were solely about who has the most gold, so to speak, Ohio State, Texas and Florida would win everything. And now maybe Texas A&M. …
“And there a lot of different sources of revenue. Sometimes we write so much about conference revenues, we forget the importance of the individual schools and the revenues that they can self-generate. Because when you look at the schools that are generating the most money, it’s not just television money. It’s tickets sold, it’s contributions, it’s a lot of different things. …
“Conference distributions are important, there’s no question about that, but that’s not the end-all, be-all.”
Here’s how important: In 2016-17, an ACC distribution north of $26 million accounted for approximately 30 percent of Virginia Tech’s $87.4 million in revenue.
And for enhancing conference revenue, the ACC Network is paramount."
