ACC 5th most valuable conference

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2016/07/18/the-most-valuable-conferences-in-college-sports-can-the-sec-be-caught/#295d94e4ff4d

"For years the Big Ten was the richest conference in college sports, taking in more from its major revenue streams than any other conference in the nation. That was until last year when the SEC, riding the newly instated College Football Playoff and massive profits from the debut of the SEC Network, surged ahead to take the title of most valuable conference in college sports. Last year the SEC made $90 million more than any other conference from its major revenue streams, and that 23% lead on the Big Ten suggested that there was little threat to the SEC’s hold on the top spot.
Yet thanks to some massive new TV deals, the Big Ten has put itself in position to reclaim its throne. Fox and ESPN are splitting the inventory, though the latter made out better on the investment front: Fox is on the hook for an average $240 million per year while ESPN will pay an average $190 million per year. CBS CBS +0.49% is also upping its basketball rights fee to $10 million per year on average. All told, that’s an average $440 million per year, or a whopping $2.6 billion over the six-year term of the deals.
The looming question, however, is whether that will be enough to catch the SEC.
This year the SEC generated an estimated $375 million in TV money, by far the most of any conference (we estimate that the Big Ten made $291 million from its TV deals last year, second-most among college conferences). The SEC also collected another $140 million from football and basketball postseason play. That’s $515 million in total, or roughly $37 million per member school. No other conference comes close to matching that per-school revenue - the Big Ten and Big 12 both sit at just over $30 million - and only the Big Ten was able to crack even $400 million in gross income.

  

To clarify, our list of the most valuable conferences in college sports compares the conferences by their three biggest revenue streams: football playoff and bowl payouts, NCAA basketball tournament prize money and media rights deals. TV revenues include both rights fees and, for the conferences with network ownership stakes, estimated profit shares. We do not include smaller revenue streams like licensing or conference tournaments.

So how about the Big Ten’s odds of pulling even? The new TV deals will reportedly pay an average $440 million per year, but annual rights fees typically escalate over the life of a TV rights contract. The Pac-12, for instance, has 12-year deals with ESPN and Fox that pay an average $250 million per year. But those annual payouts escalate at roughly 5% per year. So even though the conference just wrapped up its fourth year of the deal, it still only made some $215 million from ESPN and Fox this year. It won’t actually receive a $250 million payout until three years from now.

Assuming that the Big Ten’s new deals have a similar 5% annual escalator in place, that means the conference will earn somewhere in the neighborhood of $390 million next year. That same year the SEC will generate around $255 million in rights fees from its ESPN and CBS deals. The conference-specific networks are major factors here, but they’re mostly equivalent at this point – we figure each conference made around $125 million from its respective network. In other words, even at its least valuable the Big Ten’s new TV income will give it a major head start, and that should easily put the conference back in the hunt for the title of college sports’ most valuable conference.

And what may prove to be the Big Ten’s most brilliant move is agreeing to TV deals with such surprisingly short six-year terms. Just a few years ago the SEC lagged behind in our conference rankings thanks largely to being stuck with longterm TV deals that were lucrative when signed but had become vastly undervalued as the market surged over the last decade. The Big Ten’s new deals allow the conference the freedom to re-up for greater riches in the short-term (assuming that the oft-rumored sports TV bubble doesn’t pop). In fact, the Big Ten’s new deals expire before those of any of the other major conferences.
As noted above, the Big 12 comes close to matching the Big Ten on a per-school basis. We estimate the conference generated $302 million from football, basketball and TV. That’s fifth-most among all conferences, but split just ten ways is good for $30.2 million per school. That’s thanks largely to the $113 million the conference got from football postseason play, $65 million of which came from the College Football Playoff. The remainder of that football total came from non-CFP bowl contracts, including an incredibly lucrative Sugar Bowl association. Much like how last year the Orange Bowl, as a non-playoff game, kicked off $27.5 million for the ACC and SEC, this year the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl were contract bowls and thus paid out a staggering $140 million or so to the Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC.
The Orange Bowl’s turn as a playoff game cost the ACC that $27.5 million payout this year, and thus the ACC lags behind the Pac-12 field in total income with just $328 million this year from bowls, tourney and TV. Across the conference’s 15-school membership that’s just $21.9 million per school. Of course it’s an inexact comparison, since that school count includes football-independent Notre Dame, but even divided 14 ways it comes to $23.4 million per school, still good for just fifth-best. This year the ACC was actually the College Football Playoff’s biggest winner. The ACC led all conferences with $71 million from the CFP, a total that doesn’t include the $8.7 million that Notre Dame netted for making the Fiesta Bowl. In total the organization paid out $425 million this year, $326 million of which went to the Power Five conferences."