ACC, Florida State, Clemson drop lawsuits over TV rights

At long last, the legal battle between the ACC, Florida State, and Clemson, is officially over.

According to a report by Matt Baker in The Athletic, the conference and its two member schools have formally dropped litigation 17 months after Florida State first sued the ACC in the state of Florida. That case has now been dismissed, as have the cases in South Carolina (where Clemson sued the conference), and the two cases in North Carolina (where the ACC filed their own lawsuits against the two schools).

At issue in the various cases were stipulations around the ACC’s Grant of Rights clause that ensured the conference, rather than the universities, retained a school’s media rights should they exit the conference. The clause effectively stymied any possibility of an ACC team departing the conference until at least 2036, when the league’s media rights deal expires, as the school would be sacrificing any media rights revenue earned in a new conference.

Now, according to the initial settlement terms, ACC schools that wish to depart the conference will retain their media rights, but pay an exit fee instead. That exit fee reportedly starts at $165 million in 2026 and drops to about $75 million in 2030-31. Under the new terms, ACC schools will also be financially rewarded for drawing higher TV ratings.

The timing is critical as the Big Ten’s media rights agreements with Fox, CBS, and NBC expire in 2030. The SEC’s deal with ESPN takes the conference through 2034.

Ultimately, the lawsuits pushed the conference to lighten the financial terms for a member to exit. In turn, the ACC gained some short-term stability, and guaranteed itself some level of financial reward should its biggest brands bolt for another conference.