ACC gets TV deal with Yankees' network

GREENSBORO — At the beginning of July, the ACC took to the streets of New York City to publicize the addition of three new schools to the northern reaches of the league.

Now, the league is making strides in breaking into the New York broadcast market.

The New York-based Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network, or YES, has reached an agreement with Fox Sports to broadcast ACC football and basketball games this season.

YES is on channel 631 on DirecTV .

Under the ACC’s current television arrangement, ESPN owns the television rights to ACC sporting events and sublicenses a certain amount of them to Raycom Sports, which then licenses select events to Fox regional networks.

According to YES, the network will televise up to 10 ACC football games and up to 23 men’s basketball games, along with women’s basketball and other Olympic-sport events, during the 2013- 14 season.

Fox is a minority owner in the YES Network, which touts itself as “the most-watched regional sports network in the country the past 10 years.”

“New York is one of the traditional strongholds of the Big East,” Jeff Krolik, executive vice president of Fox Sports regional networks said in a release, “and now that the ACC is also represented through Syracuse, there should be a great deal of regional interest in these games.”

Syracuse, along with Pittsburgh and Notre Dame, officially joined the ACC on July 1.

Notre Dame, which is a member of the league in all ACC-sanctioned sports but football, also has a sizable alumni presence in the Northeast despite the university’s Indiana location.

The ACC and ESPN are still exploring the launch of an ACC channel, one that would probably necessitate a consolidation of the league’s television rights by repurchasing them from their sub-licensees.

The league has also expressed interest in possibly playing its marquee event, the men’s basketball tournament, in New York City, either in Madison Square Garden or at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

The tournament is scheduled to be held at the Greensboro Coliseum for the next two seasons, but the host sites for the 2016-21 cycle have yet to be determined.

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