The Atlantic Coast Conference set league records for revenue and member payouts yet also had a growing legal bill amid since-settled lawsuits from members Clemson and Florida State, according to the league’s most recent tax filing.
The 990 tax form covering the 2023-24 season reported the league’s revenue increased to about $711.4 million, up slightly from $706.6 million a year earlier. That allowed the ACC to pay an average of nearly $45 million to its 14 football-playing members — Louisville ($46.4 million) and FSU ($46.3 million) had the highest hauls — while Notre Dame made $20.7 million for its partial share as a football independent.
Those figures don’t reflect the arrivals of California, Stanford and SMU as new members to push the league to 18 schools for the 2024-25 season. Nor does it include the “success initiative” championed by commissioner Jim Phillips that went into effect this season for schools to keep more money generated by their own postseason success.
The ACC has also revamped its revenue-distribution plan to factor in TV viewership and reward top-draw schools. That takes effect next year as part of the settlement that ended the threats from the Clemson and FSU cases challenging the league’s ability to charge massive exit fees if they tried to join another league.
Phillips has talked about the league’s “aggressive” efforts to generate more revenue amid a growing gap behind the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences in what many consider to be a Power Two of the conferences, though the ACC has been ahead of the smaller Big 12 in revenue and payouts in its filings to solidify itself in third.
For example, the Big 12 reported revenue of $493.8 million in its filing for 2023-24, down from $510.7 million the previous year. That came in its final season with Oklahoma and Texas in the fold before both schools moved to the SEC for 2024-25, along with the additions of BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF to the Big 12 that year.
Amid that expansion and revenue decline, the Big 12 went from distributing about $44.2 million to 10 schools in 2022-23 to $39.5 million to those same programs for 2023-24. The four new schools received reduced shares averaging around $20 million, by comparison.
The ACC’s gains have notably come since the launch of the ESPN-partnered ACC Network in August 2019 has been a boost. The league reported $288.6 million in TV revenue for the 2018-19 season before the network’s launch, but that figure reached $487.1 million for 2023-24 — a 68.8% increase.
Yet amid those gains, the league reported more than $12.3 million in legal expenses for 2023-24, a 70.2% jump from the previous year ($7.2 million) coming as FSU filed a December 2023 lawsuit and Clemson followed in March 2024.
The increased legal costs also come amid legal cases reshaping the landscape of college athletics, including the landmark settlement to a $2.8 billion federal class-action antitrust lawsuit filed by athletes against the NCAA and its largest conferences. That settlement is awaiting final approval by a federal judge before terms can go into effect as early as July 1, such as schools sharing more than $20 million annually with athletes.
The ACC reported nearly $19.6 million in legal expenses through its two most recent tax filings, similar to the combined total reported for the previous six years ($20.8 million).
Still, the resolution in the FSU and Clemson cases, along with ESPN in January picking up its option to extend its base-rights ACC media deal through 2035-36, offered a measure of league stability when it came to its annual spring meetings in Florida this week.
“Chaos and the constant wondering of what’s happening here or there, I just think that distracts from the business at hand,” Phillips said then. “But I feel good about where we’re at.”
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