Through 10 weeks of the college football regular season, the Miami Hurricanes are positioned to earn the largest financial windfall from the ACC’s new revenue-sharing model based on television viewership.
That new model splits the ACC’s TV revenue 60-40: 40% is divided equally among its members, and 60% is divided based on television ratings in football and men’s basketball. Football viewership accounts for 75% of the ratings-based portion of the revenue formula, and men’s basketball viewership accounts for the other 25%.
And so far, Miami holds a sizeable lead on the rest of the conference. According to data compiled by the Raleigh News & Observer, 30.1 million total viewers have tuned in for Miami’s football games this season. The Hurricanes are followed by Florida State (24.6 million viewers), Clemson (18.1 million viewers), Georgia Tech (14.3 million viewers), and North Carolina (13.1 million viewers) as the five most-watched teams in the ACC so far this season.
All the way down the chart, Boston College (1.7 million viewers), NC State (3.7 million viewers), and SMU (3.8 million viewers) round out the bottom three.
Measuring viewership on a school-by-school basis isn’t an exact science. Some schools are scheduled for more games on the ACC Network, which Nielsen doesn’t measure. Likewise, some schools are the beneficiaries of scheduling. Miami, for instance, drew 10.8 million viewers for its Week 1 contest against Notre Dame, a game played on Sunday night with no other football competition. Other schools benefit from rivalry games against nationally relevant opponents, like Georgia Tech’s annual matchup with Georgia.
It’s not entirely clear how the ACC accounts for these discrepancies, or whether the conference is using aggregate or average viewership to determine payouts.
Regardless, it’s good to be one of the conference’s biggest brands as the ACC does everything it can to allow its most popular teams to compete with the financial might of the SEC and Big Ten.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.