What is a game? 9-Figure Answer Will Shape FSU, Clemson, ACC Lawsuits

The most important argument of ongoing lawsuits between Florida State/Clemson and the ACC became a little clearer this week thanks to a recently unredacted South Carolina court filing.

At the heart of the dispute between the conference and two of its biggest brands is this question: Who owns the television rights to an ACC home game after a school leaves the league?

If those rights belong to the ACC until their contracts with ESPN expire (until 2036), the Seminoles and Tigers risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in TV revenue if they leave the league. If FSU and Clemson retain those rights, it’s possible the exit cost could be just a walk-on fee of about $140 million.

The answer to this dispute lies partly in the ACC-ESPN contracts – documents Clemson had for weeks, FSU will soon receive It is The Florida Attorney General’s claims should be public. Because ESPN and the ACC assert that these agreements include trade secrets, references to them were so heavily redacted in the court filings that some arguments were impossible to follow.

Until Thursday’s filing Pickens County, South Carolina (where Clemson sued the ACC).

Clemson and the ACC agreed to remove some redactions from the school’s complaint. It turns out that an entire round of conference realignment could hinge on the contracts’ definition of “game.”

The ACC granted ESPN broadcast rights to contests, “in which any Conference Institution is the home team, or in which the Conference or any Conference Institution otherwise controls the distribution rights.”

Which brings us to Clemson’s now-public argument: If the Tigers leave the ACC, they will no longer be a “Conference Institution.” They will not be an ACC home team and will not play in games where the league controls seeding rights (like a conference tournament).

Although Clemson has ceded its TV rights to the ACC through what is called a grant of rightsthe school claims the document applies only to rights necessary to fulfill the ACC’s ESPN agreements.

“The ESPN agreements do not require the ACC to provide ESPN with the rights to games in which the home team is not a member of the ACC, therefore, if Clemson were not in the ACC, the Conference would not have the contractual obligations to provide ESPN with the rights to produce, distribute and sublicense Clemson home games,” said a recently unredacted portion of the lawsuit.

And if the conference has no contractual obligations to grant those rights to ESPN, they will belong to Clemson. Millions of matching TV dollars would do so, too.

It’s unclear whether a judge will agree with that interpretation. Different courts could read it differently as proceedings unfold. South Carolina, Leon County (where FSU sued the ACC), and North Carolina (where the ACC separately sued FSU and Clemson).

But the latest request at least gives us a better sense of what exactly Clemson is arguing.

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