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Message: [QUOTE="billybud, post: 1034453, member: 3850"] I think it is maybe 50-50 that the ACC will have a network in 2017... All I know is what I read....no inside info at all... ...... 1...A competitive market analysis for the ACC was turned over [URL='http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/terrapins-insider/wp/2014/04/24/in-latest-legal-filing-maryland-submits-acc-conducted-market-analysis/']as part of a court filing by Maryland in the ongoing legal dispute[/URL] regarding the school's departure for the Big Ten. The document, [URL='http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1147299/maryland-acc-brief-exhibit-a.pdf']obtained by the [I]Washington Post[/I][/URL], may just be a point of reference for the competing lawsuits over money owed by Maryland to the ACC. But the presentation also details the ACC's view of itself in the college landscape and potential areas of growth, including a conference network similar to ESPN's SEC Network. "If it is determined that an ACC Network can be a success," the analysis states. "ESPN has indicated it will do a deal on the same terms and conditions as it has with the SEC on the SEC Network." .... "Swofford: Looking ahead, there's not much of an update I have to cover for you today, but I felt it was important to note that we will continue to have our discussions with our partners at ESPN about a potential ACC channel, and I remain pleased with how productive and insightful those discussions have been to this point." .... Has the time come for an ACC Network, an actual channel dedicated to the conference? The easy answer is yes. There has never been a better time to start a sports network of any kind. Live sports moves the broadcast needle like nothing else. Demand among advertisers has never been higher. The increasingly astronomic rights fees broadcasters are paying reflect that. Yet there are other considerations for the ACC, which is why the conference has taken a surprisingly equivocal tone about its television future – which will be decided alongside ESPN, which holds the conference’s rights through 2027, and could take another two or three years to shake out. “You really have to look at it strategically from a business standpoint to determine whether it makes the most sense long term, because it’s a long-term decision,” ACC commissioner John Swofford said in an interview Sunday. “It’s not something you get into and get out of real quickly. We want to be diligent. And by we, I’m talking about us, the league, but also ESPN. You don’t take that step unless you feel pretty confident it will be a successful business venture for both entities.” .... Not everyone has cashed in. Start-up costs are astronomical. The University of Texas’ Longhorn Network has struggled. The Pac-12 Network is not widely available. And the ACC would have to buy back the rights to games ESPN has sublicensed to Raycom and Fox Sports. Even a successful conference-specific channel always requires a tradeoff between exposure (on ESPN and other mass-market networks) and money (subscriber fees). For the ACC, that means weighing the reach of the so-called ACC Network, the rebranded Raycom syndication, against the financial benefits of an actual ACC Network. The relative success of ESPN’s newly launched SEC Network will have a lot to say about the direction the ACC goes. “Time will tell,” Swofford said. “There’s at least a belief right now by what you see happening that a devoted conference channel is the way people seem to be going. We’re all a little different. From our standpoint, you don’t want to go down that road simply because it’s the fad or the sexy thing to be doing. You want to go down the road because you strongly believe it’s in the best interests of your conference.” [/QUOTE]

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