Will the ACCN save the ACC's financial future?

https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2018/08/06/Colleges/ACC-Network-main-story.aspx

The ACC has pinned its financial future on revenue it expects to generate from a conference-branded linear network. But before it realizes any income from the ACC Network, which will launch a year from now, its schools will spend a whopping $110 million to $120 million of their own money so they are prepared to produce live events and other programming.

That’s four times what SEC schools spent to get ready for that conference’s network launch in 2014.

The ramp-up to the ACC Network will be an expensive one, to say the least, with ACC schools budgeting $6 million to $10 million each to buy equipment, build infrastructure and hire staff that will man high-end production studios and cutting-edge control rooms — the bones of a network that will be owned and operated by ESPN.

Neither the conference office nor the schools are disclosing their revenue projections, but some reports have suggested $10 million to $15 million in per-school revenue annually from the network — lofty expectations indeed that would have to be based on full distribution throughout the league’s footprint.

At the same time, Swofford is insisting the actual projections are much more conservative. He’s repeatedly told the schools that another launch like the SEC Network’s in 2014 isn’t likely. The SEC Network hit the airwaves with 60 million subscribers, the most successful cable launch in history, ESPN said, resulting in $7.5 million in new revenue, per school, in year one.

Conference-by-conference revenue

For the 2016-17 fiscal year. Parentheses show number of schools in each conference.

Per-school avg.*

Total revenue

SEC (14)

$41m

$650m

Big Ten (14)**

$37m

$513m

Pac-12 (12)

$31m

$509m

ACC (15)

$27m

$418m

Big 12 (10)^

$34m

$371m

Note: The Big Ten’s new TV deals with Fox and ESPN started in 2017-18 when per-school revenue jumped to more than $50 million. Conference tax returns for this past year will be available in 2019.
* Average among schools receiving full share. Some disparities exist in the way conferences calculate shares.
** Newer members Nebraska, Maryland and Rutgers don’t receive full shares yet.
^ Doesn’t include some third-tier TV revenue kept by the schools. Revenue from the Longhorn Network, for example, is not part of the conference distribution.

Source: Conference tax returns, USA Today Get the data Created with Datawrapper