Raycom Sports
 |
|
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Sports Broadcast Television Production Sales & Marketing Syndication Distribution Event Management |
| Fate | Loss of two major conferences Big Ten Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference since purchasing Big Ten Network by Fox Sports holding a 51% majority stake and ACC Network purchased by ESPN beginning in 2019 Raycom Sports may transform into sports planning division |
| Founded | June 19, 1979 |
| Defunct | July 2019 (potentially) |
| Headquarters | Charlotte, North Carolina |
|
Area served
|
United States (Nationwide) |
|
Key people
|
Ken Haines (President & CEO) |
| Owner | Raycom Media |
| Website | www.raycomsports.com |
Raycom Sports is an American syndicator of sports television programs. It is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, and owned and operated by Raycom Media. It was founded in 1979 by husband and wife, Rick and Dee Ray. Since its inception, it has produced and distributed football and basketball games from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) of the NCAA. It was also a distributor of games from the Southeastern, Big Eight, and Big Ten conferences, as well as the now-defunct Southwest Conference. In August 2019, Raycom Sports will officially stop its syndicated broadcasts of ACC college football and basketball seasons as the Conference and ESPN will then launch the ACC-ESPN cable network.
Rick Ray was a program manager at WCCB in Charlotte when he proposed that WCCB produce more basketball games. Ray thought that they would be very profitable for WCCB, given North Carolina's reputation as a college basketball hotbed. However, station management turned him down. Not long after setting up shop, Ray put together an early-season basketball tournament which became the Great Alaska Shootout.
Two years later, Raycom made what would prove to be its biggest splash when it teamed up with Jefferson-Pilot Communications to take over production of ACC basketball games. The package had begun in 1957 when Greensboro businessman C. D. Chesley piped North Carolina's run to the 1957 national title to a hastily created network of five stations across North Carolina. It proved popular enough that it expanded to a full-time package of basketball games the following season. Chesley retained the rights to ACC games until 1980, when the conference bought him out and sold the rights to MetroSports of Rockville, Maryland. Some ACC games were telecast by Raycom alone in 1980 through four or five television stations in North Carolina, including WCCB.
...
Wikipedia