I don't have a basic misunderstanding of the GOR. What I have is a misunderstanding of the actual cost of buying back media rights. That number is important for several reasons. FSU presented their interpretation of that cost. The guy in this article calls BS on that number yet offers nothing in terms of how it should be calculated or what the real costs might be. It's hard to take him seriously on that particular topic when he didn't go into any detail to support his claim. You are right in that it is a difficult question to answer. The fact that ESPN has not yet agreed to keep paying the ACC past 2027 seems to complicate it even more. In the end this will likely end up in a settlement or a judge somewhere is going to decide for them what the actual costs are. The exit fees are a separate matter that will also likely be challenged. Whether FSU has the success Maryland did on that front, we will see.
You misunderstand what he is saying. The "exit fee" is three years worth of current media payouts. That is currently approximately $130 million. There is no "real cost" to buy back their media rights. I believe he states that in copyright law, once you assign rights to someone else there are very limited legal methods to get those rights back through the legal system. You are looking for what it would cost FSU to leave with their media rights. There is no "real cost" to that. I listed an example of a classic car. If someone owns a 1971 Lamborghini Miura, he might want to sell it or he might not. The highest paid price for a 1971 Miura is about $2 million. You could say that the value is $2 million. There might be a buyer who wants to pay $2 million. However, if the owner does not want to sell the car, he will not accept the $2 million and the hopeful buyer will not get to own the car. The ACC owns the media rights of FSU athletics. FSU wants to buy those media rights back. We can make up any number we want to. Two dollars or one hundred billion dollars. If the ACC isn't willing to accept that price, or FSU isn't willing to pay that price, then it isn't the actual price of the media rights.
There is no "exit fee" to leave the ACC
with your media rights. There is no way to calculate such an "exit fee" because it doesn't exist. There is an exit fee to leave the ACC. FSU can pay that price and leave for the 2025 season if they so choose.
There is the issue that the ACC owns FSU's media rights. That has nothing to do with an exit from the ACC. That is not a penalty for leaving the ACC, that was a conscious decision by FSU to assign the media rights to the ACC. What this lawyer is stating is not that the numbers are inaccurate. He says "The total, a staggering $572 million, misleadingly conflates separate contractual elements, and is an obvious attempt to take what is fundamentally a question of intellectual property licensing and supplant it with one having to do with antitrust law." He is stating that FSU is swirling all of the numbers together and calling them something they are not. He says "FSU may have a conceivable beef with the raw exit fee, not the money tied to the GOR (an entirely separate issue tied to licensed intellectual property as opposed to a contract penalty)" Those are totally separate items and have nothing to do with each other.
We DO NOT KNOW that ESPN can unilaterally cancel the entire contract with the ACC. FSU has made that claim, but FSU is also conflating and confusing many other points.
The fanboys say that it costs $572 million to leave the ACC. That is totally inaccurate. It costs $130 million to leave the ACC. That is in the ACC bylaws. This article says "Copyright law doesn’t provide an avenue for licensors to rescind their rights based solely on a change in market conditions or the realization that a deal is a bad one." In other words, courts will not give FSU their rights back just because FSU wants them back. Courts are not going to enforce a value that the ACC must accept for the media rights just because FSU wants to sell those rights to someone else.
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