CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jim Phillips has spent his five-plus-year tenure as Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner trying to generate more revenue for a league facing financial pressures even with yearly record hauls.
For his league — and across the national landscape in the revenue-sharing era, for that matter — that has included more emphasis on corporate sponsorships.
Finding event sponsors for naming rights. Securing deals for advertisements on conference TV networks. It’s all about looking for ways to sell those options and supplement the media rights payouts and earnings from postseason success that stand as core engines of the college financial system.
And stacking every bit helps in a time when schools are allowed to pay athletes directly.
“I don’t know if it’s pressure, but it’s the reality,” Phillips said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press during the league’s preseason football media days. “To me it’s the reality of this role and it’s reality of our league. We have to continue to find incremental dollars each and every year that continue to grow.”
That’s been a particular focus for Phillips, too, in dealing with a significant revenue gap behind the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference since his spring 2021 arrival.
The league reported about $826.5 million in total revenue in tax filings covering the 2024-25 sports season, with schools earning a full distribution share getting an average of $47.1 million.
That continued the ACC’s upward trajectory; the league reported $617 million for 2021-22 in Phillips’ first full season, good for a full-share average of $39.4 million. And Phillips said Wednesday during his annual forum that the league would crack $900 million in total revenue for the just-completed 2025-26 season.
By comparison, the Big Ten and SEC both crossed the $1 billion mark in total revenue in their 2024-25 filings, with the Big Ten paying an average of nearly $79.9 million to full-share members while the SEC came in at nearly $72.4 million.
The biggest way to move the needle for a league looking to change its financial picture typically is media rights contracts. The ACC is locked into a deal with ESPN - both for its base TV rights and the August 2019 launch of the ACC Network - through the 2035-36 season. The TV revenue continues to increase, but Phillips said at least some gains have come through corporate sponsorships, such as investment management firm T. Rowe Price putting its name on the tradition-rich men’s basketball tournament.
The ACC has doubled its list of corporate sponsorships to nine in the past five years, a list that includes Apple, Dr Pepper, Gatorade and Allstate. On Wednesday, the league announced a deal with AI cybersecurity firm ReliaQuest, which includes advertising through ESPN, ESPN parent company Disney and the ACC Network.
That goes with other adjustments such as changes to the league’s revenue-distribution model to reward programs that generate higher TV viewership and the “success initiative” that allows schools to keep money generated by their own postseason success.
“You can’t wait around, you can’t just kind of sit on your hands as it relates to some of these other areas and not fully explore and commit to finding those additional dollars,” Phillips told the AP. “All of that stuff adds up incrementally.”
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