Just in time for the start of March Madness this month, the ACC Digital Network launched ACC Sports on Apple TV, joining a cadre of sports-related plug-ins that includes MLS, MLB.com, NHL, NBA, ESPN and, debatably, WWE.
Six ACC men’s basketball teams entered this year’s Division 1 NCAA tournament, and all have now been eliminated. That development takes a bit of the wind out of the new app’s sails, but it wasn’t as though you could watch the games with No. 1 seed Virginia and the other teams anyway. For the time being, ACC Sports offers little more than on-demand highlights, sporadic news stories and some blast-from-the-past type memorable moments from classic games of yore.
The ACC Digital Network was designed in partnership with Silver Chalice Ventures, a digital media company whose portfolio also includes Campus Insiders, a digital college sports network in its own right that covers all the major collegiate conferences. ACC Sports has only four tabs currently, and one of them is devoted to Campus Insiders.
In a statement officially announcing its Apple TV presence, the ACC called the inclusion of Campus Insiders a “bonus to college sports fans everywhere.” In fact, the addition of CI is more than a bonus – currently, it feels like the main draw of ACC Sports. With CBS/ESPN veteran Bonnie Bernstein on board as its VP of content and brand development, CI offers some slick original programming from the likes of “Sports Illustrated” writer Seth Davis and Bernstein herself, recorded at Oprah’s Harpo studios in Chicago.
Campus Insiders also has deals in place to live-stream future college sports events, which may be the primary explanation for its tab’s prominent placement within ACC Sports. The app presently has no live offerings and is going to need reasons down the road to make it worth clicking away from WatchESPN to check in with it. CI may be able to provide at least some of those reasons with deals already in place for digital-only live broadcasts of select games from other conferences like the Mountain West Conference.
For now, however, there has been no mention of when that glorious day might come, and ACC fans will have to settle for watching college lacrosse highlights, playmaking reels from Grant Hill’s career at Duke, and plenty of other non-essential fare.
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