While the ACC might consider changing its name after expanding to the Pacific and Texas a couple of years ago, the decision to add California, Stanford, and SMU to the mix has clearly paid off from a revenue standpoint.

According to a recent report by Brian Murphy of WRAL, the ACC notched a 16% increase in revenue for the first academic year to include California, Stanford, and SMU. The league’s revenues jumped from $711.3 million in the year ending in June 2024 to $826.5 million in the year ending in June 2025.

As expected, the lion’s share of the revenue increases came from expanding ACC Network’s in-market footprint into California and Texas. Under the distribution agreements between ESPN, which owns ACC Network, and cable and satellite companies, distributors pay per-subscriber rates that are several times higher for ACC Network when the channel is being distributed to subscribers within the market of an ACC school. By adding two teams in California and a team in Texas, the ACC began earning in-market rates in those states, greatly expanding the footprint of pay-TV subscribers being charged the higher fees.

Per WRAL, the ACC’s television revenue jumped by more than $100 million year-over-year — from $487 million to $588.8 million — after adding the western schools.

In total, the ACC distributed $736.6 million to its 18 member schools. That figure is still substantially below both the SEC and Big Ten, which each distributed over $1 billion to its schools this year, but perhaps isn’t as large a gap as one would expect given the disparity in media rights agreements between the ACC and the Power-2 conferences.

The ACC is still operating under a media rights deal implemented in 2016 which, before expanding, paid the conference an average of $240 million annually over its 20-year term. By comparison, the Big Ten is bringing in an average of over $1 billion per year under its set of media agreements, and the SEC is earning about $710 million per year. Given that context, the ACC’s ability to payout its schools at about 75% of the level that the Big Ten and SEC are can be seen as an unlikely success.

For the first time, the ACC implemented its success initiative that provides unequal revenue distribution based on certain performance-based benchmarks in football and men’s basketball. Such benchmarks include participation in the College Football Playoff, or finishing in the CFP Top 25. Part of the revenue is also distributed based off of television ratings, with more money going to schools that attract larger television audiences.

Clemson led the conference with a $55.1 million payout, with the average payout for schools receiving a full share clocking in at $47.1 million. Cal and Stanford, who agreed to reduced shares when joining the conference, received $22.9 million and $19.5 million, respectively. SMU agreed to forego its entire media rights payout for the first several years of membership, but was awarded $17 million for its CFP berth.

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