There are two sets of standings for Atlantic Coast Conference schools this football season.
The ranking of schools by wins and losses will impact which teams qualify for the playoff, win the conference championship or go bowling. The other standings – by television viewership – will impact, perhaps as important, how much money each school receives from the conference office.
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Welcome to the ACC’s new reality, where conference revenue is no longer divided evenly but instead split by on-field success and television ratings, likely leading to massive gulfs in distribution between the top and bottom of the league. The changes were implemented after lawsuits from top football brands Florida State and Clemson against the league and aligned with their desires to earn more money.
“If you want to earn more money, then you're going to need to invest,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said at the league’s football media event last month. “We have two prongs to this thing. We have the overall success initiatives where, go perform in football and men's and women's basketball, and you will get a bigger share of the revenue from the conference than others. Then viewership ends up being: go put a good team together, invest, play good competition, play good nonconference games, draw attention.”
The ACC earned a record $711.3 million in the 2023-24 academic year, the last year for which public records are available. The league distributed an average of $44.9 million to its 14 all-sport members. Each school individually earned between $43 million and $46.4 million, the minor variations owing to things like travel expenses for bowl games and such. Notre Dame, which not a conference member for football, earned $20.7 million.
The average distribution is third among all leagues, behind the powerful Big Ten and Southeastern conferences.
The ACC set another record for revenue during the 2024-25 season, thanks to increased payouts from the new 12-team College Football Playoff and the additions of Cal, Stanford and SMU. ACC television partner ESPN pays the league the same per-school rate for the new additions, and the schools drove growth in the ACC Network by converting the channel’s subscribers in the populous Northern California and Dallas markets to a higher in-market fee.
However, when the league’s per-school distribution is released next spring, it won’t look anything like the current narrow band. According to an athletics presentation by Virginia Tech for Monday’s Board of Visitors meeting, some schools could receive $65 million, while others receive as little as $35 million — less than they received in the past, because of the new distribution formulas.
Cal and Stanford, orphaned when the old Pac-12 scattered and in need of a stable conference home, will receive just 33% of the media rights distribution for the first years of their ACC membership. SMU, desperate to reach a top-tier conference, will not receive any media rights distribution for its first 12 years of membership.
The expansion surplus, upwards of $600 million through 2036, is being used to offset travel costs for existing league members and to fund the league’s success initiative.
The 2024-25 season marked the first season of the initiative, which pays schools more for football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball success.
Those payouts are on top of television rights distribution payments from ESPN for its base rights and the ACC Network. Of the $711.3 million in revenue that the ACC generated in 2023-24, more than $487 million came from television, according to tax documents. The league made another $194 million from postseason bowls and the NCAA, which distributes money from the men’s basketball tournament.
“The ACC has been innovative in its approach to conference revenues,” Phillips said. “As part of the modernization of college athletics, these new models allow us to maintain distributions for all ACC members that are above most other conferences while also providing flexibility for competition at the highest level of revenue.”
Some leagues do give schools a larger share of revenue based on postseason success. No league previously used television viewership to help determine how money is distributed.
“You look at a lot of conferences around the country, they do have a couple, three, four, five schools that are driving the majority of the ratings,” NC State athletics director Boo Corrigan said. “I think Commissioner Phillips took a big step forward by trying to create a creative answer to something.”
Clemson, SMU, Duke top initial success initiative
Based on public comments from a top NC State athletics department official and public documents released by Virginia Tech, WRAL can project what each school earned from the success initiative.
Teams earned $4 million for an appearance in the new 12-team College Football Playoff with the chance to earn more by advancing through the playoff – $4 million for the second round, $6 million for the semifinals, $6 million for the title game. As the CFP money grows, so, too, will the distributions.The ACC is projected to receive more than $13 million per school when the new CFP contract begins with the 2026 season, up from $5 million currently.
During a Feb. 6 NC State Board of Trustees committee meeting in Raleigh, Beverly Armwood – the department’s chief financial officer – outlined other dollar amounts behind the success initiative.
As part of the presentation, she explained, football teams that reached a bowl game in 2024 would receive $1.8 million, teams that finished in the AP Top 25 would receive another $1.8 million. For each game played in the NCAA basketball tournament teams would receive approximately $350,000 (men) or $60,000 (women).
Additionally, each of the ACC’s existing teams would receive $1.6 million from the league’s “expansion surplus” -- the money from adding the western schools. Most of that money would go to offset travel costs associated with expansion.
These projections match up with an incomplete chart in Virginia Tech’s presentation that outlines which schools reached success metrics. The chart doesn’t list the schools by name, simply calling them Institution 1, Institution 2, etc. But, as in the below projections, it shows that 15 schools earned some part of the success initiative.
Clemson: $7.95 million
SMU: $7.6 million
Duke: $3.79 million
Miami: $3.6 million
Syracuse: $3.6 million
North Carolina: $2.68 million
Louisville: $2.27 million
NC State: $1.98 million
Cal: $1.86 million
Georgia Tech: $1.86 million
Pitt: $1.8 million
Boston College: $1.8 million
Virginia Tech: $1.8 million
Notre Dame: $180,000
Florida State: $120,000
Stanford: $0
Wake Forest: $0
Virginia: $0
Total: $42,890,000
| Teams | CFP in 2024 | Top 25 in FB | Bowl eligible in 24 | MBB tourney | WBB tourney | Total |
| Clemson | 4,000,000 | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | 350,000 | 7,950,000 | |
| SMU | 4,000,000 | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | 7,600,000 | ||
| Duke | 1,800,000 | 1,750,000 | 240,000 | 3,790,000 | ||
| Syracuse | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | 3,600,000 | |||
| Miami | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | 3,600,000 | |||
| North Carolina | 1,800,000 | 700,000 | 180,000 | 2,680,000 | ||
| Louisville | 1,800,000 | 350,000 | 120,000 | 2,270,000 | ||
| NC State | 1,800,000 | 180,000 | 1,980,000 | |||
| Cal | 1,800,000 | 60,000 | 1,860,000 | |||
| Georgia Tech | 1,800,000 | 60,000 | 1,860,000 | |||
| Pitt | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | ||||
| Boston College | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | ||||
| Virginia Tech | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | ||||
| Notre Dame | N/A | N/A | N/A | 180,000 | 180,000 | |
| Florida State | 120,000 | 120,000 | ||||
| Stanford | 0 | |||||
| Wake Forest | 0 | |||||
| Virginia | 0 | |||||
| Total | 42,890,000 |
ACC football champion Clemson and first-year member SMU reached the CFP, and both lost in the first round. Duke played five games in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, reaching the national semifinal, and was one of 13 ACC teams to qualify for a football bowl game.
Notre Dame, which also reached the CFP, is not eligible for football distribution since it’s not an ACC member in that sport.
ACC adds viewership distribution component
Florida State sued the ACC in December 2023. Clemson followed in March 2024. The ACC filed its own lawsuits against both schools, setting off costly legal actions in Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina. The league spent more than $12 million on legal services in 2023-24, according to tax filings.
In March, the three sides announced they’d settled the cases. In May, representatives at each ACC institution signed off on the agreement. As part of the settlement, which effectively ended the league’s Grant of Rights and established specific fees for schools to leave the conference, the conference agreed to the viewership distribution model.
Each ACC team will receive an equal share of 40% percent of revenues from the ACC’s base media rights deal. The other 60% is shared unevenly based on five-year, weighted TV viewership. Football accounts for 75% of the unequal share, while men’s basketball makes up 25%.
Cal, Stanford and SMU aren’t eligible for the viewership distribution until they become eligible for 100% of media rights distributions. Notre Dame can’t receive any of the football viewership portion.
The viewership numbers will include games on nearly every network, not just those that report Nielsen ratings or other publicly available ratings data. But games on ABC and ESPN reach far larger audiences than those on networks with less reach or down the pecking order.
There will be winners and losers.
According to Virginia Tech, a game on ABC or ESPN has 1.82 million more viewers than a game on networks with less reach, such as ACC Network. And that means an incremental increase of $560,000 in viewership payouts in one year and $1.61 million over the five-year, weighted average.
Clemson, Florida State, Miami, North Carolina and Notre Dame, which has a scheduling agreement with the league, drive nearly all of the league’s conference-game appearances on ABC. The league’s other members haven’t played a conference game that wasn’t against one of those five teams on ABC since 2019, according to a WRAL analysis.
In 2024, just three ACC vs. ACC games were broadcast by the network: Clemson vs. NC State, Miami vs. Louisville and Miami vs. Duke. All three kicked off at noon. Four ACC vs. SEC games aired on the network, two in the first week of the season: Clemson vs. Georgia, Miami vs. Florida, NC State vs. Tennessee and Georgia Tech vs. Georgia.
ABC and ESPN are owned by the same company.
“When I look at our partner, they've been really good to us,” Phillips said. “You may feel that way, and sometimes I may feel that way, but they always react to me and to us when we feel like maybe we're not getting the same kind of treatment.
“One of the things we have to do is we've got to perform better, too. We can't go 2-11 in postseason bowl games [like] last year. We had 13 [in bowls], which was incredible, and then we played poorly. So we have to do our part. We'll continue to work with our partners at ESPN, but it is a priority as we move forward.”
The ACC’s settlement with Florida State and Clemson spelled out how the viewership distribution will be calculated and distributed, broadcast eligibility, measurement metrics, ratings process, the weighting formula and qualified platforms. But all of that detail is redacted from the publicly-available information. The league has run projections from previous years but hasn’t made that information public either.
Virginia Tech, in its presentation, provided its own rankings. In football, Clemson and Florida State have ranked 1-2, in some order, since 2018. Miami has been No. 3 each season.
Last year, Georgia Tech – which opened the season against Florida State in Ireland and played a memorable seven-overtime game against Georgia on the last weekend of the regular season – ranked No. 4.
UNC has been either fifth, sixth or seventh since 2019. NC State placed seventh in 2024 and fourth in 2022.
The only other teams represented in the top seven over that time: Louisville, Pitt, Virginia Tech and Syracuse. Four teams that have been members the entire time – Duke, Wake Forest, Boston College and Virginia – don’t appear in the five-year rolling average, as compiled by Virginia Tech.
Belichick effect
The rankings matter, of course, but not as much as the actual numbers because each school’s share is “proportionate to their percentage of the ACC’s total viewership from qualified events,” according to the settlement.
“The ACC has been inventive,” said Rick Barakat, North Carolina’s chief revenue officer.
Schools will have their own calculations – and decisions – to make.
Is it better to schedule down in football, aiming for bowl eligibility and the success initiative payment that comes with it, or is it better to schedule a big-time football opponent with hopes of landing big ratings for viewership distribution money?
The league has typically opened the season with big opponents and viewership opportunities. This year is no different. By Labor Day, ACC teams will have played on CBS (Stanford at Hawaii), ESPN (Georgia Tech at Colorado, Cal at Oregon State, Virginia Tech vs. South Carolina, TCU at North Carolina) and ABC (Syracuse vs. Tennessee, Alabama at Florida State, LSU at Clemson, Notre Dame at Miami).
North Carolina’s hire of NFL coaching legend Bill Belichick should help the Tar Heels. His hire has attracted intense interest, with ESPN leading the way. Phillips said the league’s television partner “ran to us” after the Belichick hire in December. In addition to the season opener, UNC’s Friday night games at Cal and Syracuse are scheduled for ESPN. The Tar Heels’ home game with Clemson on Oct. 4 could be an ABC game if the Tar Heels get off to a solid start.
“We’re preparing to be on the good side of those incentives,” Barakat said. “We feel we’re well positioned. The timing is good for us.”
NC State, however, caught a bad break in the ratings game. Its Oct. 11 game at Notre Dame — whose home games air on NBC – promised to be one of its most watched games of the season. But the game was moved exclusively to Peacock, NBC’s streaming service.
“You would think as a Notre Dame grad, maybe they’d do a little bit of a favor,” NC State athletics director Boo Corrigan said.
NC State opens the 2025 season against ECU on Thursday, Aug. 28 on ACC Network. NC State plays Wake Forest on a Thursday night on ESPN and hosts Florida State on a Friday night on ESPN.
“It goes back to being as good as you can be,” Corrigan said. “The better you are, the better the slot, the better the ratings. I think it’s a creative answer to where we are [as a conference].”
Could NC State head to Notre Dame undefeated at 6-0? Because much of the ACC’s schedule is set throughout the course of the season by those oft-despised 10-day and six-day television windows, there is a chance for a team to grab attention with a hot start.
Virginia Tech’s presentation includes data on how wins in a season translate into appearances on network television. At six wins, teams can expect two network games. At seven or eight wins, that’s three network games. At nine wins, it’s five. At 10 wins, it’s six. At 11, it’s seven. Add that together with the incremental revenue and a 10-win season $2 million more valuable than a six-win season in just one year.
“There is that opportunity to get to the big show, to get to ABC, to get to ESPN, to get to the primetime game,” Corrigan said. “A lot of it is in front of us.”
Basketball matters, too
As much as football drives college athletics today, the ACC built its brand on men’s basketball. Five schools have won a national title as part of the league: Duke, North Carolina, NC State, Maryland and Virginia. Louisville and Syracuse won titles before entering the league. Cal and Stanford, too.
The league’s downturn in men’s basketball pains Phillips. Just four teams reached the NCAA Tournament in 2025, down from a previously unthinkable five berths the three years prior.
“I am restless with ACC men's basketball, and I'm responsible for it,” he said. “I feel responsibility for it, but it's not good enough where it is right now. I know our coaches feel the same way.”
That’s one reason the league gave basketball its own viewership distribution at 25% of the pot. It’s also an opportunity for different ACC brands to make an impact.
Duke has been No. 1 in men’s basketball viewership each season since 2017-18, according to Virginia Tech’s documents. UNC has been No. 2 each year. Virginia, Louisville and Syracuse have been the next three schools, in some order, since 2017-18.
NC State was seventh in 2023-24, ninth the two years previous and eighth the first two years.
New coach Will Wade promised to elevate the Wolfpack program to the top of the ACC. NC State plays in the Maui Invitational for the first time and plays signature nonconference games against Auburn and Kansas. NC State, however, only plays Duke and North Carolina once in the regular season.
“Go fight for those dollars from a viewership standpoint,” Phillips said. “Everybody's going to get a certain level of viewership dollars, which, again, there will be a little bit of teeter-tottering based on your performance, based on your team, and that's healthy. It may not fit all leagues or other leagues, but I know that was part of what was right and a reconciliation for the league.”
Note: This story has been updated to reflect that Cal and Stanford will receive 33% of media rights distribution and not 30%.