http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/florida-gators/
This column is meant more as a warning for Florida State and its fellow ACC members. Beware of the Gators and their filthy rich Southeastern Conference brethren, who — with all of their SEC Network money — could be on the verge of spending you into irrelevance.
Granted, at this point in time, the ACC has never looked better with national championships in both football (Clemson beat SEC goliath Alabama) and basketball (North Carolina beat Gonzaga), but don’t kid yourself: The SEC is earning money and spending it at an alarming rate.
All you have to do is look at UF as an example. The Gators likely will announce soon they are getting ready to build a new baseball stadium and a new softball complex. This comes on the heels of totally refurbishing their basketball arena to the tune of $64.5 million and building a new football indoor-practice facility for close to $20 million.
And coming soon: Another $60 million for a stand-alone football Taj Mahal that surely will be filled with smoothie bars, waterfalls, laser-tag studios and all sorts of amenities to entice the recruits who don’t go to Alabama.
“I think the SEC Network and the money and exposure it has provided has been a huge factor,” says UF basketball coach Mike White, who took his team to within one victory of the Final Four in his second season. “The network is providing an incredible amount of money for our institutions to spend on facilities. When you look around the league, there are renovations everywhere.”
According to the most recent numbers, ACC revenues dropped during the 2015-16 fiscal year and the conference offered the lowest annual payout per school ($23.8 million) of any of the Power 5 conferences. Compare that to the SEC’s bowl and TV payout of $40.42 million and then do the math. If this massive discrepancy were to continue over a 10-year period, the Gators would make $160 million more than the Seminoles. That’s a lot of plush facilities to entice wide-eyed recruits.
And we’re just talking about bowl and TV revenue. In total earnings, the SEC averages $30 million per school more than the ACC. You simply cannot continue operating at such a financial deficit and expect to consistently compete.
If you really want to put it in perspective, think about it this way: The discrepancy between the SEC and ACC payouts is almost as large as the discrepancy between the ACC and the American Athletic Conference payouts. In other words, when it comes to financial comparisons, the Gators are to FSU what FSU is to UCF.
The hope, of course, is that when ESPN launches the ACC Network in 2019 that FSU and its league partners can begin to close the gap. But in this era of cord-cutting among viewers and budget-cutting at ESPN, the question is: How profitable will the ACC Network be?
Obviously, it’s not going to be as successful as the SEC Network, which, according to AL.com, has been valued at nearly $5 billion — four times more than even the highly successful Big Ten Network.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the ACC is hurting for cash; it’s just that the SEC has it to burn.
The bottom line is the bottom line.
In sports as in politics, those contestants and candidates with the most money usually win.
