Ever-widening revenue gap continues to loom large at ACC spring meetings

The ACC has been lagging behind other conferences in television revenue for more than a decade now, and some would argue it has been lapped by both the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten in recent years.

That's a big enough problem for new Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips.

An even bigger one is the notion that the league could seemingly be blown off the track in the near future as both of those conferences ink new TV deals that project to make them hundreds of millions of dollars more per year than the ACC.

During the conference's meetings in Amelia Island on Wednesday, Phillips was asked questions about a variety of topics -- from a new football scheduling format to NIL anarchy to the potential of the Power 5 conferences breaking away from the NCAA in football.

But the issue that seems most daunting, the one that could be exponentially more problematic by the end of the decade, is the ever-widening revenue gap between the SEC, Big Ten and everyone else.

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"We have to do a better job with revenue within the conference office,” Phillips said. “And I think you’ll see a Chief Revenue Officer at some point be part of our new structure. ... So, the overall organization needs to have somebody each and every day thinking about revenue.”

In 2020, the ACC generated about $500 million in revenue. That same year, the Big Ten generated $769 million, and the SEC soared over $800 million.

Now factor in Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC, to go along with a brand-new TV contract that will start in 2024, and there are projections that each Southeastern Conference school will eventually be making roughly $50 million more than schools in the ACC, Pac-12 and Big 12.

That's not a revenue gap. It's a planet-sized chasm.

And it doesn't help the ACC's cause that it is locked into a grant of rights and television deal with ESPN through 2036.

But Phillips, who has only been on the job with the ACC for less than 18 months, says ESPN will increase its pay to the conference in the immediate future. He said it was a "big moment' when the ACC Network recently finalized its deal with Comcast.

"We'll see a nice bump, I think, coming up," Phillips said. "We haven’t had a full year of the distribution. So, that will close the gap for us, for this iteration, this particular year.”

He said the conference and ESPN have discussed different ways the ACC could raise the value of its product in the network's eyes, and perhaps generate more revenue to start building a bridge across that chasm.

He didn't offer any specifics on Wednesday but said he was "optimistic" about the talks that had happened earlier that day.

"We talked with ESPN at length about some really, I think, high-level opportunities from a sponsorship standpoint to help generate (revenue)," Phillips said. "And they're as motivated as we are, because we're 50-50 partners."

Phillips made sure to point out during his media availability that the ACC is performing quite well in a number of different sports, competing for and winning national championships just like it always has.

Clemson won football national championships in 2016 and '18 and played for the title again in '19. ACC schools have won three of the last seven national championships in men's basketball, and FSU would have been a favorite to win it in 2020 if the event hadn't been canceled due to the COVID pandemic.

But can that success continue when the gap grows to tens of millions of dollars per school per year?

The worry among fans, administrators and coaches alike is that even outside of football and men's basketball, there will be major competitive disadvantages in non-revenue sports as well. Because the SEC and Big Ten schools can just pump that extra money into those programs, resulting in better facilities, higher coaching salaries and more championship-level teams.

“We want to address that and close that as often and as quickly as we can,” Phillips said of the gap. “But I’d also say at the same time (that) just because you have the most money doesn’t mean you win all the time, either. Depending on whatever sport you look at.

"And so that’s not an excuse not to try to close the revenue gap, but I also know that we’ve done a really good job in our schools of taking the resources that they’ve had and using them to have success.”

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