In light of the new B1G contracts with Fox and ESPN, I wanted to see how this may impact the ACC in terms of tv scheduling and moving typical tier-3 content up to ESPN networks. I posted a table at the end but it is hard to read.

Methodology: I used nationalchamps.net which is great web site for seeing the tv schedule. By conference (and G5) I pulled totals for each of the ESPN family of networks (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNNews) except for SECN. I excluded weekday games on non-holiday weekends because they don’t represent desirable/competitive time slots. I excluded bowls. The conference of the home team gets the credit for the game. I should have excluded the 10+pm games on Saturdays as well but just keep that in mind when you are viewing the Pac’s number. So when viewing the numbers take into account ACC’s contract to show Thursday/Friday games, SEC’s contract with CBS and games on SECN, B1G’s B1G Network, B12’s Fox contract, and Pac’s Fox contract.

Takeaways:
Under the new B1G contract with ESPN, ESPN gets 25 games. ESPN networks showed a whopping 58 B1G games in 2015. That is 33 openings for other conferences to fill. The totals from the other conferences are: ACC - 37, SEC - 36, PAC - 17, B12 - 18, G5 - 47.

ABC breakdown: ACC - 13, B1G - 22, SEC - 0, PAC - 3, B12 - 8. B1G leads the way on the big station. I am not sure of the contract languages but it is strange that SEC was loaded on ESPN and zero on ABC. I believe it is typical for a conference to require a certain number of games on a network (e.g., ACC on ABC).

ABC/ESPN breakdown: ACC - 19, B1G - 30, SEC - 20, PAC - 14, B12 – 14. B1G exceeded their new 25 game allotment alone on the two big networks. Opens up some good timeslots for other conferences.

ABC ESPN ESPN2 ESPNU ESPNN Total
ACC 13 6 7 8 3 37
B1G 22 8 8 12 8 58
SEC 0 20 6 10 0 36
Pac 3 11 3 0 0 17
B12 8 6 2 2 0 18
G5 5 1 11 14 16 47