ACC’s financials, including lowest Power 5 payouts to schools, a window into its past
In most years, the ACC’s tax return is a pretty good window into how the league fares when measured against the other power conferences, in terms of dollars and cents if not wins and losses. Its most recent financial figures, though, are merely a window into a bygone era the conference has left behind.
The ACC’s IRS Form 990 for the 2018-19 academic year is the last before the launch of the ACC Network, which the league believes will catapult it into closer quarters with the SEC and Big Ten. Even then, the inevitable impact of the coronavirus pandemic is going to skew things to a very small degree in the launch year and almost certainly to a grand degree in 2020-21, which will be John Swofford’s final year as commissioner.
As such, it’s merely a snapshot of the conditions that made the launch of the network so essential, a moment of inequity with its peers frozen in time — and left behind forever, the ACC hopes and expects. If all goes well for the ACC, it’s a time capsule from the last moment it lagged behind.
So while comparisons can be made to the other Power 5 conferences, they mean less than they ever have. The numbers that matter aren’t out yet, although Swofford offered a preview last month when he said the ACC expects to distribute 98 percent of planned revenue to schools in 2019-20, with the cancellation of the basketball tournament because of COVID-19 mitigated by reduced expenses from not conducting spring sports championships.
“ESPN has paid us in full on the base agreement of our arrangement for the 2019-20 year, so we’re certainly in decent shape, sound shape financially coming out of this year,” Swofford said in May.
How those numbers end up comparing to the other power conferences remains to be seen. Next year’s tax forms will tell that tale.
In 2018-19, ACC revenue was down about 2 percent from $465 million in 2017-18 to $455 million, a drop attributed to the Orange Bowl being part of the CFP as opposed to a standalone bowl. That’s still the second-highest revenue year for the ACC. While the ACC brought in more revenue than the Big 12 or Pac-12, its average distribution per school — $29 million, with $7 million to Notre Dame — was the lowest in the Power 5.
According to documents reviewed by USA Today, the Big Ten distributed an average of $56 million to its 14 established members, the SEC distributed an average of $45 million, the Big 12 an average of $38 million and the Pac-12 an average of $32 million.
The ACC Network is expected to provide a substantial boost to per-school distributions, perhaps as much as $10 million or more per school per year eventually, even if the Year 1 number is smaller as various distributors signed up. Comcast, notably, still has not — and its 21 million subscribers that include eight ACC markets are a lode of potential TV revenue that remains untapped.
All of which is why these numbers are essentially irrelevant to the future of the ACC if still a reminder of how it got to where it’s going now, and growing network revenue will be a big part of the mandate Swofford’s eventual successor inherits.
Swofford, who announced last month he would retire in the summer of 2021, was paid $3.8 million and five senior executives, including the associate commissioners in charge of football and basketball, were paid more than $200,000, according to the tax filing. Duke received $28.9 million, N.C. State $28.4 million and North Carolina $27.6 million. That accounted for about 26 percent of UNC’s athletics budget and about 31 percent of N.C. State’s athletic budget.
And as for 2020-21, even beyond the network, who knows? While the league wrestles with what to do about football and other fall sports — and no one’s really even talking about basketball yet — the financial impacts of COVID-19 remain, obviously, completely unknown.
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 2:32 PM.
