The past couple of years have been consequential for the Atlantic Coast Conference and demonstrated the ever-changing landscape of money in college athletics. The league settled lengthy litigation disputes with two member schools and introduced new revenue distribution models to financially reward its top-performing and most-watched schools.
The ACC’s 2023-24 tax 990 form, released in May, showed a record $711 million in revenue, up nearly $5 million increase from the previous year. The league paid its member schools an average of $45 million, and all teams — with the exception of new members and Notre Dame — earned roughly the same amount. Duke received $45.87 million from the league, the third-highest figure behind Florida State and Louisville.
But the ACC’s revenue payout system has recently gone through substantial changes that will give select ACC schools more money for postseason success and TV viewership. These 2023-24 numbers do not include the ACC’s new unequal revenue-distribution streams — the success and viewership initiatives. The success initiative went into effect for the 2024-25 season, and the viewership initiative is part of the March settlement with Clemson and Florida State that will take effect later this year.
Although conferences don’t all pay their member schools the same amount, these are the most disproportionate payout distribution frameworks proposed by a major conference. All longstanding SEC teams, by contrast, earned between $52.3 and $53.1 million for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
In the wake of a year of litigation against Clemson and Florida State, the ACC is hoping to close the revenue gap for its teams with those in the SEC and Big Ten, who posted revenues of $840 and $928 million, respectively. The Big Ten paid a hefty average of roughly $63 million to its member schools. Due to the new lucrative media contracts for those two conferences, that figure is only expected to skyrocket, so the ACC’s initiatives may not make up all of the difference.
Settlement with Clemson and Florida State
The ACC settled with Clemson and Florida State in March, and both sides finalized the settlement approval June 3. Clemson and Florida State sued the league because they believed the ACC’s grant of rights agreement unfairly prevented the schools from retaining their media rights and made it financially burdensome to exit the league.
The grant of rights — signed by all member schools in 2013 — is a media deal that contractually binds league members to stay in the ACC until 2036 by giving up their TV rights to the league. This is all in exchange for a portion of the television revenue earned by the conference.
Other conferences have similar grant of rights agreements, but schools were able to wait until it expired before moving leagues. For example, Oregon and Washington left the Pac-12 for the Big Ten because their agreement ended after the 2023-24 season. The ACC’s abnormally long contract was largely to motivate ESPN to invest in the ACC Network, which kicked off in 2019 and airs a significant proportion of league contests.
Exit fees — which schools would have to pay should they choose to leave the ACC — were a significant point of contention. Florida State’s lawyers claimed that due to the combination of an exit fee and lost media rights, the cost of leaving the ACC would have been roughly $700 million. They also believed that in the ACC, the conference payment gap between them and a Big Ten or SEC team could reach $30 million or more in the coming years.
There are two key components to the settlement terms. The first is decreasing exit fees for teams that decide to leave the ACC in the coming years, and the second is a new revenue-distribution model based on TV viewership.
Following the settlement, next season’s new exit fee is $165 million, which then decreases by $18 million per year until 2030-31, when the fee would be $75 million. Additionally, schools can maintain their media rights if they decide to leave the conference before 2036.
To sweeten the deal for two of the ACC’s biggest football programs, the league created a novel revenue-sharing model on football and men’s basketball viewership. Essentially, 60% of the TV revenue that the league pays to its schools will be based on five-year TV viewership numbers, rewarding the schools that bring in more viewers. The other 40% will be evenly distributed between the member programs, although Notre Dame earns less because of its status as an independent football school.
Because football brings in nearly three-quarters of the ACC’s television revenue, it will maintain the largest level of importance. This structure could bring an additional $15 million to a select group of schools, while others could lose millions.
Duke basketball is one of the highest-viewed teams in the country, posting five of the top 10 most watched 2024-25 regular-season games on ESPN platforms. According to Zach Miller, Duke was 14th out of 18 ACC football programs in 2024 average viewership with 359,000 per contest. The Blue Devils were fifth in the league in 2023.
Success initiative
The viewership revenue model adds on to another new ACC revenue model, the success initiative, which compensates schools for postseason athletic success. The success initiative, announced in 2023, began in the 2024 football season, so the numbers from the ACC’s most recent tax filing do not include the adjusted distribution.
The ACC earns revenue from the NCAA and the College Football Playoff for its teams that earn trips and have success in postseason events, and the league is planning on sharing more of that with the respective teams.
The funds for a school could start around $4 million for a College Football Playoff berth, with additional payouts for wins in the 12-team field. Schools can also earn money through winning the ACC championship, finishing in the CFP top-25 rankings and making bowl games.
Duke spent the majority of the 2023 season ranked in the AP Poll and earned its third straight bowl appearance in the 2024-25 season.
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The NCAA also distributes “units” of roughly $2 million to conferences over a six-year period for each game played in the men’s basketball NCAA Tournament. In January, it extended those payments for women’s team games. The ACC’s success incentive model will reward teams with this revenue, and Duke earned nine total units (approximately $18 million) for its 2025 men’s and women’s tournament success.
“Today’s decision provides a path to reward athletic success while also distributing additional revenue to the full membership,” said then-ACC Board of Directors Chair and current Duke University President Vincent Price in 2023.
While Duke athletics declined to comment on the settlement, Clemson Athletics Director Graham Neff believes his school could bring in an additional $120 million in the next six years, in large part because of the viewership and success initiatives.
The House v. NCAA settlement — which was approved June 6 — gives schools the opportunity to use money from their athletic department budgets to directly pay their student-athletes. All schools have a cap of roughly $20.5 million on revenue sharing, and money from conferences could help athletic departments fund their teams and other necessities.
On the flip side, teams towards the bottom of the ACC in viewers or football and men’s basketball success could see decreasing payments from the league in the coming years. These initiatives could also strengthen the incentive for schools to focus on and fund revenue sports (football and basketball) at the expense of other teams.
The 2024-25 990 form will be released in 2026, and the past filings of the ACC and other conferences can be found on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer tool.
Ranjan Jindal is a Trinity senior and audience engagement director of The Chronicle's 121st volume. He was previously sports editor for Volume 120.