For those of you who still think of John Swofford as "The Ninja", here's a piece of his legacy that still sticks in the craw of many ACC fans: the Raycom side deal.
Untangling the leftover threads of the ACC’s 2010 TV deal with Raycom has been one of new commissioner Jim Phillips’ trickier tasks.
— Luke DeCock (@LukeDeCock) August 22, 2022
“It’s a one-sided deal. I can’t yell at them,” Phillips said. “They signed the deal. They got the deal. Congratulations.”https://t.co/KsfFfuiowJ
Luke DeCock, in his article in the News and Observer, quoted new ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips with the above statement. However, there is some good news in his post:
...the leftover threads of that deal with Raycom... will eventually come off the books in 2027 — at which point each ACC school will get an immediate bump of about $3 million more per year from the ACC.
So, at least they have that going for them.
Why do they have to wait until 2027, you ask? The OP answers that, too:
Other rights still held by Raycom included a package of one football game and two men’s basketball games a week as well as the women’s basketball and baseball tournament games. Raycom had resold those to Fox and other RSNs in a deal so profitable that it proved prohibitively expensive for ESPN to reacquire the rights in 2016. The additional football and basketball inventory doesn’t offer enough additional value to justify the cost to reacquire it.
In other words, the ACC gave a package of games to Raycom, but rather than producing those games themselves (as, I'm sure, was the original intention), Raycom sold those rights to Fox - who ultimately resold them to Bally Sports. Now, after Raycom and Fox have already turned a profit (and Bally would want to do the same in any sale), there just isn't enough margin left to make it worthwhile.
Not even thinking ahead enough to make the media rights "non-transferrable" really highlights the ineptitude of the previous ACC regime when it comes to negotiating television contracts!Untangling the Raycom Deal
No comments:
Post a Comment