ACC+IMG= Not As Much $$$ As the SEC...

Looks like the ACC waited a year too late to negotiate their new deal...
But, they're going to do it, anyway...

John Ourand and Michael Smith from Sports Business Daily educate us this way...

The Atlantic Coast Conference is set to hire IMG Sports Media’s Barry Frank to handle its next media rights negotiations, according to several informed sources.

The two sides could sign a deal as early as this week. Frank’s ties to ACC Commissioner John Swofford go back to last year’s BCS negotiations when Frank was the BCS media consultant and Swofford was beginning his term as BCS coordinator.

The ACC also considered Wasserman Media Group’s Dean Jordan, who pitched the conference for the business in the middle of last month.

The ACC’s media rights expire after the 2010-11 season, and the conference is hoping to continue the trend that’s seen the SEC and BCS score huge rights-fee increases. Last year, the SEC signed deals with ESPN and CBS guaranteeing the conference an average of more than $200 million a year for the next 15 years.

Given the ongoing recession, most college media executives expect the ACC to begin taking bids next spring, hoping for a healthier economy. The incumbent rights holders, ESPN and Raycom Sports, are expected to make significant offers. There’s a chance another bidder, like a Versus, could enter the negotiations or the conference could look into forming its own channel, à la the Big Ten Network. But several college media executives say an ACC channel is unlikely. As part of its current seven-year deal, the ACC’s football rights belong to ESPN and its basketball rights to Raycom. Combined, those contracts generate about $73 million in annual revenue for the conference.

Raycom re-sells the basketball rights annually to various networks, like ESPN, CBS and Fox Sports Net, while also syndicating games to local over-the-air broadcasters in the ACC’s footprint.

CBS and ABC each pay Raycom $250,000 per ACC appearance, while ESPN pays about $150,000. The number of ACC appearances vary each year by network, but CBS and ABC each buy about five annually, Fox Sports Net and other regional nets buy about 35 to 40 and and ESPN’s networks may take as many as 35 to 45. Raycom broadcasts about 40 itself.

In this next round of negotiations, ESPN is expected to make a bid for the basketball rights directly to the ACC, bypassing Raycom. Raycom, meanwhile, has been seeking a cable partner, such as Comcast or Time Warner, to take to the negotiating table.

ESPN is less likely to go after the local broadcast syndication rights because of conflicts it would have in some ACC markets that also cover SEC teams, insiders say. ESPN holds the SEC’s syndication rights.

At an industry conference last fall, Frank said that during BCS bidding, ESPN assured him that it would make a competitive bid for the ACC. At the time, Frank was not under contract to handle the ACC’s media rights, but he clearly expected that he would be.

“One of the things we did, candidly, is take [ESPN’s] pulse,” he said. “Is ESPN going to treat us fairly? And the answer was, ‘You have our word that we will.’ We accept that. And we accept that they will make a fair and equitable deal. … What equals fair is the precedents they have set already with, for instance, the SEC deal. You look at that as a benchmark.”

While those of us at OSG HQ don't quite see the deal that the Southeastern Conference got, we look forward to seeing all the dollar signs that Raycom, the four-letter, and the Versus are going to throw around at the benchmark...