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- Nov 29, 2015
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Why would ESPN increase the payouts if they don't have to? How could the ACC annoy them? It looks to me like ESPN holds all the cards. They determine whether to continue on with the current agreement by the end of next month. If they agree to continue it, the ACC is locked in till 2036 to that TV contract. What could the ACC do?
espn is under no obligation, but there is still a question of whether the tv contract ends in 2027 or 2036. The focus of the lawsuits hasn’t been on espn yet, it’s the ACC teams suing the ACC. As far as I have seen, the ACC itself hasn’t brought a lawsuit against espn trying to invalidate the extension of the GOR. FSU hinted at the grounds for saying the extension is invalid when it amended the complaint against the ACC saying Swofford was self dealing when negotiating the extension (and I think it’s clear he was”) and cost the ACC schools tens of millions of dollars.
Wouldn’t be completely out of the question for a court to agree Swofford breached his fiduciary duty to the ACC through the self dealing. Now that wouldn’t necessarily void the contract between the ACC and ESPN, but it would be a major embarrassment. It sets the stage for a follow on lawsuit where ACC schools will say espn knew full well that Swofford was self dealing , but didn’t inform ACC schools or terminate the negotiation because they were getting an incredible bargain (Swoffords priority was making sure his son got paid).
espn might decide it doesn’t want to have its dirty laundry aired or risk a court saying extension is invalid and tv deal ends in 2027. They compromise with ACC, conference gets a higher payout through 2030. After 2030 there is going to be a seismic shift anyways so it’s the increase in payouts over the next 5 years is kind of a down payment. They can always try to claw some of it back with the next deal (like sec teams get 100% payouts in megaconference, ACC teams gets
90% payouts for the first 5 years).
It wouldn’t make shareholders happy if the ACC directly sued espn. Disney stock is already in the toilet. The couple hundred or so million espn might add to the tv payouts through 2030 to placate the ACC is chump change compared to the amount lost if Disney stock plunges 3-5% due the news that a major conference in cfb has proof espn collaborated with the acc commissioner to ***** the acc.
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