The recent announcement that ESPN intends to fulfill its TV contract with the ACC brought the conference’s legal battles with Florida State and Clemson back to the forefront. While the legal system’s wheels have been moving slowly in recent months, activity is about to pick up again. Here then is an update on the ACC’s legal battles with its own schools.
ESPN Contract
First, we have to understand what the ESPN announcement means. It is not an extension of any contract. It is simply an announcement of the network’s intent to stick with the one they already signed.
When the ACC schools signed a revised Grant of Rights that extended into 2036, it was under the premise that ESPN was also extending its contract with the conference. What was not in the documents was that ESPN had an opt-out clause that they could exercise in 2025, to begin in 2027. The recent announcement from the conference and the network really boils down to this; ESPN is not going to utilize the 2025 opt-out clause.
Update on the ACC Legal Battles With Its Own Schools
ACC v. Florida State
This is the case that began in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina in a special complex contract court. The ACC is suing Florida State for breach of contract for attempting to leave the conference.
Florida State filed a motion to dismiss. It’s based on a claim of sovereign immunity, that with the public school being a function of the state government, it is protected from lawsuits in other states. Judge Louis Bledsoe III denied the motion, but issued a stay on any further proceedings, pending FSU’s appeal of the ruling. Bledsoe retired three weeks ago. Florida State has filed for its appeal to be heard by the Supreme Court of North Carolina.
As of the publish date of this article, the case is not yet on the court’s dockets. Attorneys we have spoken to on both sides of the issue say they expect the case to be heard in late March or early April. It should be noted that the state supreme court has one seat in flux as the election results for the seat are being challenged by the losing candidate.
Florida State v. ACC
Leon County, Florida is the venue where this is being heard. Florida State is contesting specific terms of the Grant of Rights, and the agreement that binds the school to the ACC. FSU is looking to have the freedom to leave the conference without being held to the Grant of Rights. That contract, per the ACC’s contention, says that if a school leaves prior to 2036, they do so without their broadcast rights. Without those, a school’s athletic program has little value to a new conference.
The ACC filed a motion to dismiss last year. Again, the issue is jurisdiction. The conference’s attorneys claimed that the proper venue for any of the cases was in Mecklenburg County because that is where the ACC headquarters are, and because the ACC filed its lawsuit first.
Trial court judge John C. Cooper denied the motion to dismiss. And he went a step further. He refused to grant the motion to stay, meaning all processes and discovery in the case would go while the ACC appealed.
The ACC appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, based on the “First to File” legal principle. The First Circuit denied the ACC’s appeal. But the appellate court did grant a stay, to halt the progress of the case while the ACC appeals to the Florida Supreme Court. The conference has filed for the state’s high court to hear the case, but there is no date yet. An irony here is that one of the lead ACC attorneys in the matter is Alan Lawson, a former Florida State Supreme Court justice.
Clemson v. ACC
Clemson University has filed a suit similar in case law to that of Florida State, in order to have the right to exit the conference with its broadcast rights in its back pocket. It has not garnered as much attention because Clemson’s administration, as the petitioner has not been as vocal about its unhappiness in the conference.
The trial court portions of the case are being heard in Pickens County, South Carolina by Judge Perry Gravely.
The ACC filed a motion to dismiss based on the same jurisdictional issues as in the Florida State case. Judge Gravely denied the motion last Summer, and the ACC is appealing though there is no current date for the case to be heard at the next level. There are no “First to File” claims by the conference in this case.
ACC v. Clemson
As in the FSU case, the conference is suing Clemson for breach of contract for trying to get out of the GoR and the conference affiliation agreement. The conference did not beat Clemson to the court clerk’s office for the filing, as it did by a day with Florida State, so the ACC is not claiming “First to File” rights. It is simply a jurisdictional fight.
As in the FSU case, Judge Bledsoe denied Clemson’s motion to dismiss in Mecklenburg County. Clemson will also be appealing to the Supreme Court of North Carolina and the case is expected to be heard before the court adjourns during the Summer months.
The evidentiary point that both schools have made about the ESPN ties to the conference is now more tenuous. Both of them made the claim that all the ACC schools were told, in writing, that by agreeing to extend the Grant of Rights through 2036, they were doing so to coincide with an extension of the ESPN contract. Nowhere in the Grant of Rights did it ever mention opt-out rights only for ESPN.
With ESPN agreeing to stay for the duration of the contract, the ACC is hoping that agreements can be reached with both schools to end what looks like litigation that could last for years. While financial rewards for on-field/on-court success have been increased by the ACC, the net revenue for both schools from the conference still pales in comparison to members of the SEC and Big 10. And the members of the those two conferences will get another financial boost when the TV contracts come up for renewal several years before the ACC Grant of Rights expires in 2036.
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