First of all we do not really know for sure what BYU's current deal is. Estimates have been all over the board ranging from $4M to $8M or even $12M depending on how many were ABC/ESPN/2 vs ESPNU/News to some not believing it was even $4M. So how would we really know.

Here is info about the new deal for the AAC.

Per-school payouts from this deal are expected to rise to $6.94 million per year, almost $5 million more than the level they were at.

So if somewhere in the $4-8M was accurate our current deal is then about what the AAC will be getting on their new much bigger (for them) deal.

That also means that AAC was previously only getting less than $2M per year from media rights. And this is for all their sports not just football...

…The comprehensive deal provides ESPN with rights to all of the AAC’s live programming, except for a small package of basketball games on CBS and some Navy football games on CBS Sports Network. The new contract also calls for some Saturday football games to be broadcast on ABC. Football, along with men’s and women’s basketball, will remain on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, but the majority of basketball games and a significant number of the football games will go to ESPN+. Other live sports including baseball, softball and soccer also will air on ESPN+.

Note BYU gets other TV revenue from the WCC contracts for other sports as well as any revenue they get from BYU TV/Radio contracts. Which I believe the WCC was $2.5M a year which alone was more than the entire previous AAC rights fees without any BYU football or other BYU TV/Radio contracts...

They then wrap up with this helpful note...

For AAC fans, this is less unilaterally positive, as they’ll likely now have to buy an ESPN+ subscription to catch some of the content they’re interested in. Yes, that’s only $5 a month for now, but that price likely won’t stay that low forever. And with split packages like this that also include content on ESPN’s linear TV channels, many fans can’t just buy ESPN+; they’ll also need a cable/satellite/streaming pay-TV subscription in order to catch games on those TV channels. The increase in rights fees here should help AAC schools compete, but this is also going to get more expensive for many of those who follow the conference.

I have not been following ESPN+ that closely. I thought perhaps this was becoming the new ESPN3 and if you have a provider with ESPN then you are authorized to watch it. But after reading this and another FAQ it seems like ESPN+ requires its own subscription. It can be watched in the same app as live ESPN streams (if you have the TV provider login) and ESPN3 games but those streams require additional funds.

I had previously assumed those that talked about ESPN+ possibly being part of the new BYU deal that it was not a big deal as it would not replace anything important. For example I can watch the game on BYUtv vs having to pull up an ESPN3 stream...but I'm not sure if they'll be willing to allow the simulcast on BYUtv if it is relegated to ESPN+ as they need to boost those subscriptions. Not really a fan of that as I live in a location where the best we can get is CenturyLink DSL at a max of 10MB where we can almost never achieve more than 1.8MB 🙁