Fantastic job of burying the lede by The Baltimore Sun in this interview with ACC commish John Swofford, who lets drop that the ACC is considering forming its own TV network similar to what the Big Ten has done. The proximate cause of this consideration is the hellalot of money the Southeastern Conference landed for its own TV rights.
Recall last year the SEC got $3b. from ESPN and CBS for a 15-year football and basketball deal. Swofford says the ACC is also looking to package both sports together in any new deal, and the package concept likewise lends itself to a league-branded network.
The problem for the ACC is that SEC football bigfoots anything the ACC has to offer in markets like Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Columbia and is at least a push in places like Orlando. ACC hoops is just not a TV draw outside of the Carolinas. Add limited TV pull for Boston College even in Boston let alone the rest of the Northeast and Swofford has a real problem on his hands. His time would be better spent trying to poach WVa and Rutgers from the Big East, killing it as a BCS conference, while strengthening the ACC’s presence in the mid-Atlantic region both in football attendance and TV eyeballs.
That’ll never happen, though. But the ACC could get backed into this ACC Network thing.
