ESPN is exercising an option to extend its media rights deal with the ACC, a move that will keep the partnership in place through 2036.
The ratified extension was announced Thursday by conference higher-ups ahead of a looming deadline. In the absence of an extension, the ESPN-ACC alliance would have timed out on July 1, 2027.
ESPN confirmed the news in an announcement Thursday afternoon.
Details pertaining to the legacy rights deal, which was inked in July 2010, came to light last summer, when a heavily redacted copy of the 251-page contract was released by the Florida Attorney General’s office. Section 14.1 of that document states that “ESPN has the exclusive, revocable option …but not the obligation, to extend this agreement until [date redacted].”
A separate document, which was also redacted, established that the deadline to exercise the option to extend the agreement had been changed to February of this year.
The contract was made public as part of the ongoing lawsuit between the ACC and the Florida State Board of Trustees. Financial terms and other details were blacked out. The original deal was said to be worth $1.86 billion when it was hashed out nearly 15 years ago.
The ACC reported a conference-high $706.6 million in gross revenue during the 2022-23 academic year, distributing an average payout of $44.8 million to its 14 football programs. Notre Dame, a non-football member, received $22.1 million. While the conference enjoyed a 15% boost during that period, its revenue haul still fell short of the volume generated by the SEC ($852.6 million) and Big Ten ($879.9 million).
As ESPN reported earlier Thursday, Notre Dame is expected to play more football against the cream of the ACC, which includes Florida State, Clemson and Miami. Of those three schools, only the latter is not currently mired in a lawsuit with the conference. That said, the extension—and a proposal to divert more TV revenue to the conference’s top “brands”—could go a long way toward scuttling the various legal intrigues that have been brewing since late 2023.
Florida State’s Trustees filed suit against the ACC on Dec. 22, 2023, charging the conference with mismanaging its rights deals and the threat to impose “draconian withdrawal penalties of at least $572 million” against any school that tries to leave the fold. Clemson, for its part, emphasized that it had not given notice to exit the ACC in its March 2024 complaint.
The proposed restructuring of the ACC revenue has been kicked around since last fall.
Should the extension of the ESPN-ACC deal mollify Florida State and Clemson, the conference will have defused a legal battle that has already sprawled across courtrooms in three states. Lawsuits of this nature tend to be ruinously expensive and long-running; the Big East’s litigation over Miami and Boston College’s defections to the ACC was settled nearly two full years after the fact.
(This has been updated in the headline and the story with the ACC and ESPN confirming the extension.)
