ACC commish reacts to ESPN on FSU AD addressing conference revenue issues

Jim Phillips says he is confident that the ACC will stick together and is a dominant conference. (Photo: Matt Cashore / USATODAY)

by TigerNet Staff - Thu Mar 02 12:34:55 GMT-04:00 2023

Comments from Florida State athletic director Michael Alford have reverberated throughout the league and around the sport when it comes to concerns over the ACC's revenue compared to the rest of the perceived 'Power' conferences.

"At the end of the day, for Florida State to compete nationally. Something has to change moving forward," Alford told the Florida State board of trustees last week. "At the end of the day, if something’s not done, we cannot be $30 million behind every year compared to our peers."

Out of that meeting, talk of potentially needing $120 million for a buyout to leave the ACC has surfaced from the Seminoles, but that's just the start with the ACC's Grant of Rights agreement and the hundreds of millions of TV revenue that would be lost if the agreement all conference schools signed stays in place and cannot be challenged.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips responded to those concerns in an ESPN interview recently.

"None of the concerns that were shared during that meeting were things that we haven't already been looking at and addressing as a conference," Phillips said to ESPN. "We've been open about our league's discussion on revenue generation and business innovation, and have been exploring all options to enhance overall revenue."

One area suggested has been scrapping the largely equal revenue sharing within the conference and instead steering the revenue in accordance with who's making the revenue within the league. That would benefit teams performing well in football historically such as Clemson.

Per ESPN, the ACC's winter meetings "emerged without anything approaching consensus on a new distribution plan, something that would require a two-thirds majority vote."

The SEC announced earlier this year an average of $49.9 million per school distributed for the 2021-22 fiscal year. For the previous fiscal year, the ACC reported distributions between $35 million and $38.1 million, trailing the Big Ten as well with between $43.1 million to $49.1 million there.

Phillips told ESPN that he is "confident that membership will stay together, now and into the future."

"I don't know that there's a magic bullet on this thing. I'm not sure there's one thing you can do to address the gap," Phillips said. "I think you have to address it in several ways and I'm confident we'll do that. I'm confident in the health of this league and that we'll continue to work together."