What new ACC TV deal means for UNC

UNC could be playing football games on Fridays as part of the ACC's new TV contract. PHOTO: Robert Willett

As I’m sure you’ve heard about by now, the ACC and ESPN earlier this week announced a restructured TV rights deal that will pay the conference $3.6 billion over 15 years. The deal goes into effect July 1, and runs through the 2026-27 college sports season.

So what does this mean for the individual schools and, particularly, for UNC? It means, for one thing, that ACC schools will stand to make, on average, $4 million more per season off of this TV deal when compared to the old one, which only went into effect July 1, 2011.

The ACC’s old TV contract with ESPN – a deal the league announced in July 2010 – was a 12-year deal that would have paid the conference $1.86 billion. So, obviously, the agreement announced earlier this week is a far more lucrative one for the ACC and its member institutions. The restructured contract came about because of the impending entrance of Pitt and Syracuse to the ACC.

Some things to keep in mind:

--On average, the new deal will pay member schools $17.1 million per year. But that’s on average. I didn’t do a great job of explaining that in the story I linked above. According to a person with knowledge of the deal, the TV contract will start out paying member schools about $12.3 million in the first year. There are escalators built in, and so schools won’t start seeing $17 million for a while. But towards the end of the contract, the deal will pay members more than $20 million annually.

--What does the new deal mean for UNC? In the short term, it means that it will make about $17 million annually from TV and radio deals. The school will receive $12.3 million next year from the ACC. Add onto that about $4.6 million that it receives from its radio/TV contracts (coaches shows, mainly) with Leerfield Sports, and that’s about $17 million. During the current fiscal year, UNC is receiving $4.6 million from Leerfield and $10.9 million from the ACC. That $10.9 million is UNC’s TV revenue share from the ACC.

So the new TV deal won’t make ACC schools tremendously better off than they already were, at least not in the short term. But the money will gradually increase over the life of the concert.

Here’s a look at how much UNC has made off of TV/radio contracts in recent years:

2011-12 – $15.4 million
2010-11 – $11.5 million
2009-10 – $11.3 million
2008-09 – $11.5 million