Historic College Football Program Gains 35% Unexpected Bump In Week 1, AD Stunned

With a new season, it’s a new era for the ACC, and it’s the ‘money-talking.’ The ACC conference is switching to an incentive-heavy model. And it started with FSU and Clemson’s piled-up lawsuits against the conference. Since a lot of ACC’s viewership was owed to them, they wanted a bigger piece of the cash pie. But why the shift? The Tigers and the Seminoles racked up the majority of the viewership for the ACC. Their demand? To dictate revenue per view. Although initially, the ACC showed resistance, it caved in. Now? The new model splits only 40% of media-rights revenue evenly, and the remaining 60% gets rolling based on the viewership metric, and the Hokies are cashing it all as well.

Virginia Tech’s Week 1 outing was a home game against South Carolina. But it neither happened at home nor was it held on a Saturday. The two sides faced each other in the 3 PM slot on Sunday afternoon at ESPN. They were part of the two-game Sunday slate. The other game also featured an ACC team in Miami, which faced Notre Dame later that day.

The Hokies’ AD Whit Babcock was hoping that the timing would mean more eyeballs on the game. As per Damein Sordelett, Hokies beat writer for the Roanoke Times, Babcock was looking at 4 million openers for his team’s season opener. Well, as per the broadcasting figures from the day, the numbers went way above what the AD imagined. Instead of 4 million eyeballs, the rare matchup at Mercedes-Benz Stadium grabbed 5.4 million views.

More than Deion Sanders’ Colorado could whip up. Even Sherrone Moore and Bryce Underwood couldn’t eat up more than 2.1 million viewership. And more eyeballs equate to a bigger revenue slice for the Hokies, as per the latest ACC’s revenue-share setup. And that’s an unexpected revenue splurge for Babcock.

Winning for sure will stack up your game-day stats, but it’s the viewership metric. That’s the chokehold around reaping the financial crop. Today’s football economy, grabbing eyeballs, is the equivalent of churning out the revenue, and for athletic directors, the real scoreboard sits inside that electronic box. The only downside (and a big one) is that the Gamecocks defeated the Hokies by 24-11. Virginia Tech does not have a regular-season matchup against the Gamecocks, like it has against the Virginia Cavaliers. But the success of week 1 and the financial crop reaped from it might witness ‘the Battle of the Birds’ as a stable occurrence.

But it’s not just Virginia Tech; the ACC is cashing up as well

Not just Virginia Tech, which has racked up massive viewership as the fifth-most-watched game heading into week 1. Other ACC programs are making some noise as well. ABC & ESPN saw a record opening over the weekend. The Miami vs Notre Dame game raked in a whopping 10.8 million views. Trailing behind are Alabama and Florida State University, eating up 10.7 million views.

Next is the Clash of the Tigers, LSU vs Clemson, earning 10.4 million views, followed by TCU against Bill Belichick’s Tar Heels, with 6.1 million views. Then, at the fifth spot, we have the Hokies and South Carolina Gamecocks.

And the increased viewership is not just about the conference; it’s also rooted in the strength of the schedule. All of the above games? High stakes, brimming with anticipation since forever. It was the SEC-ACC narrative as well, and the ACC was beating them rough or up close. “You have to continue to modernize how you’re looking at scheduling,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said in an interview with AP.

He continued. “You have to be honest with yourself about the compression that exists now on Saturdays with the number of quality teams that are playing all over. So, there’s a limited number of windows, and you have a terrific partner with ESPN. ” Let’s see what the ACC week 2 brings forth for college football viewership.