ACC backs Duke’s TV deal with Amazon, calling it innovative despite Big Ten pushback

AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. (AP) — At a time when college athletic departments are desperately looking for new revenue sources, Duke “came up with something creative” and landed a three-game deal with streaming giant Amazon, Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips said.

Phillips praised the Blue Devils for working with ACC television partner ESPN to secure a first-of-its-kind contract that could set a precedent for future cash grabs around the league and maybe the country.

“If there’s other opportunities that are out there that schools bring forward, we’ll look at it,” Phillips said Wednesday while wrapping up the league’s three-day spring meetings inside a posh resort in northeast Florida. “I think it’s innovative by Duke.”

Phillips offered some insight into how the deal came together and said negotiations never undermined the ACC’s current TV contracts. Duke agreed to future scheduling commitments with ESPN in exchange for the three games on Amazon Prime Video.

“I’m not worried about it because ESPN was in every one of the conversations,” Phillips said. “To Duke’s credit, they came up with something creative, and they brought it to ESPN and us. Where it finished and where it started maybe wasn’t exactly the same spot, but at the end of the day, they also get negotiated.”

Amazon and Duke announced an agreement last month for Prime to exclusively air three Duke men’s basketball games during the 2026-27 season. The trio of games will be marquee matchups inside professional sports arenas and feature one of the biggest brands in college hoops: Duke.

The Blue Devils will play UConn in Las Vegas on Nov. 25, defending national champion Michigan in New York on Dec. 21, and Gonzaga in Detroit on Feb. 20. The three-game slate signifies the start of Amazon delving into live college sports.

It won’t be the last, and everyone in the college sports landscape surely took notice and started scheming up ways to find something similar to create more money. Several ACC administrators and basketball coaches said the deal provides a potential path toward additional financial resources.

“I still have some questions on it, going back and forth,” Florida State athletic director Michael Alford said. “Not just questions, more knowledge than anything. I want to see how that impacts us, what can that mean for us in the future and how do we look at things differently if given those opportunities or present those opportunities to the league that we have a game that maybe we want to look at moving and doing in our favor.

“But I do have a lot of questions about it still — about how it all worked out.”

The Big Ten does, too.

The league reportedly has notified ACC and ESPN officials that it owns the rights to the Duke-Michigan game at Madison Square Garden because it’s scheduled to take place in “shared territory.”

The Big Ten and ACC TV partners agreed to alternate broadcast rights to neutral-site games between members played in shared territory like New York City, according to Yahoo Sports. Since ESPN televised last season’s Duke-Michigan game in another shared territory, Washington, D.C., Fox believes it owns this matchup.

“Duke liked getting this little deal with Amazon,” Phillips said. “Duke can talk to the Big Ten about it. The commissioner is not part of that one. I’m not involved in it. It’s one less thing I got to deal with.”

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