ACC Still Holding Off on Private Equity Despite Big 12 Leap
“Nothing so far has interested us,” Jim Phillips said Wednesday.
AMELIA ISLAND, FLA. — The ACC is still not ready to embrace PE. That was the gist of an answer from ACC commissioner Jim Phillips on Wednesday.
Front Office Sports asked Phillips at the ACC spring meetings about a majority of Big 12 schools saying they aren’t yet taking a $30 million line of credit offered through that conference’s landmark private capital deal . “To date, there’s nothing that has made sense,” Phillips said. “And so we’ll look at it again—in fact we’ll talk about it next week in Charlotte—but there’s nothing that has been put forward that interests us.
” Phillips added, “We’ve looked at the RedBird deal, I’m happy for Brett [Yormark] that he got that done, he worked hard on that, that’s what he wanted to do for his league. And we know what that looks like for the ACC. But that just hasn’t been something our group has wanted to do.
” Big 12 school presidents approved the conference’s deal with RedBird Capital Partners and Weatherford Capital (founded by former FSU quarterback Drew Weatherford) that includes a $12. 5 million infusion into the conference, opportunity to coinvest in new revenue opportunities for the conference, and a line of credit for up to $30 million for each individual school. The schools have a year to choose to take that offer, but at this time, 13 of the 16 member schools say they are not taking it , while the remaining schools are not commenting.