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Why UCLA wanted a chief revenue officer
Daniel Cruz has spent his past few years working with superheroes in his former role as VP/digital media at Marvel. Now he’s joining a world of college athletics that’s creating, well, super headaches.
Why? The parallels are more similar than you think.
“What I do is I work with IP to marry with great brands, and then I take talent and we create great creative assets and we create storytelling,” said Cruz, who was hired as UCLA's first chief revenue officer on Oct. 14. “The more I talked to [UCLA AD Martin Jarmond], there was a direct correlation of the IP is UCLA athletics and the institution, the talent is the great student athletes, and then the brands, they want to create great storytelling.”
Cruz, who has worked in varying capacities at Disney for the better part of the last decade, along with stops at Spotify and ESPN, isn’t the first to be hired in such a role (Utah and Texas Tech have made similar staffing decisions). That said, his background is certainly unique among those who’ve been hired in such roles.
“Working at Disney, I've been very fortunate to have access to some of the greatest IP in the world,” he said. “I look at college sports, I look at UCLA as [some] of the top IP assets that are out there. … What I'm hoping to do is create a super authentic connection between the brands we want to work with and the student athletes that we want to bring to the forefront to promote and showcase, so that our fans see that it's an authentic connection, and we're elevating ourselves the brands that we're working with and the student athletes as well.”
Situated in an entertainment hub like L.A., opportunities are certainly there for UCLA to make major plays in branded content. With the school likely soon to be on the hook for revenue sharing contingent on the House settlement going through, providing such opportunities for athletes to capitalize on is as crucial as ever -- and Cruz will be central to those efforts.
“What we're seeing is the commercialization of college sports, and we're entering a new agreement with our student athletes, a business relationship, helping them monetize their brand, create meaningful corporate partnerships, develop true NIL opportunities,” Jarmond said. “I call it the ‘New Deal.’ There's got to be a value proposition for our student athletes that we have not considered before -- storytelling, branding, development, developing revenue opportunities. It's all about where this is going.”
Cincinnati AD: Asset control a key rationale for bringing multimedia rights in-house
Cincinnati's move to take its multimedia rights in-house isn’t totally novel, but it’s certainly unique in today's collegiate landscape. Clemson, Arizona, Rutgers and Nebraska have all made similar efforts in recent years (Nebraska later reverted to a third-party and has worked with Playfly Sports since 2022)
I caught up with Cincinnati AD John Cunningham just after the school announced its plan last week to create "Cincy Sports Partners.” It will start selling its own sponsorships on July 1. Here are a few thoughts from Cunningham on the change:
On the genesis of the idea of coming in-house: “The changing landscape of college athletics led to us looking at all options. Revenue is important and as we thought through this multimedia contract, we really dug into our options that were out there, and certainly talked to everybody in the industry. I started to talk to others that were outside of our industry in the pro sports market [and] kind of developed this idea that now might be the time to bring our assets in-house, really control our multimedia rights. Flexibility right now is at a premium with everything going on. We can raise revenue this way, and that's going to be, obviously, really important. And then, also, we can really connect our student athletes even more closely with our local community in this world of NIL that's at a premium as well.”
On what he saw at the pro level that he thinks can be replicated in college: "When you have all of your assets that you own, you're just able to work more closely with your sponsors and bring them in closer to your department than they are. The other thing that we keep thinking about is how we tailor experiences to our partners. And that can involve tickets, it can involve campus relationships, it can involve all kinds of different things that are maybe more difficult to navigate when you have a third-party involved. We just, again, felt like the flexibility that you get when you control all of your assets, especially in this new day and age with everything that's going on, changes that we expect in the future, it made sense. Timing worked out that this contract was coming up at a time of great disruption, [we looked] at all options and this is the best option for us right now.”
On whether former MMR rights holder Learfield will stay involved at some level: "There's a really good chance that they will [stay involved]. All of our national sales, we're going to be open for business to whoever is out there looking to sell nationally. So that's part of the equation.”
Will more Group of Five ADs be leaving for Power Four roles?
Georgia Southern AD Jared Benko recently decided to leave his post in Statesboro for an executive deputy AD gig at Auburn.
At first glance, the move was a bit surprising. Benko, by all accounts, had done a nice job elevating Georgia Southern and had been in the mix for bigger jobs before (he was a finalist for the Mississippi State gig when it opened in late 2022).
On paper the move would’ve been shocking say, 10 years ago. Now? Not so much. Consider that the divide between the Power Four (read: SEC and Big Ten) and everyone else has grown steeper by the year. Between that and schools’ needs for better revenue generation, there’s rationale for why moves like Benko’s are happening more often.
Benko is also far from the only Group of Five or lower-level AD to move on to a deputy post in recent years. Louisiana Tech has seen its last two ADs make such moves between Tommy McClelland (Vanderbilt) and Eric Wood (Ole Miss). Miami also hired Saint Peter's AD Rachelle Paul as its Deputy AD and senior woman administrator in 2023.
Recently fired Power Four ADs, too, have found soft landing spots in similar places. Take former West Virginia AD Shane Lyons at Alabama or ex-Auburn AD Allen Greene at Tennessee as proof of as much (Greene was also hired as the new AD at Pitt two weeks ago).
While this doesn't mean that the Group of Five isn’t producing top-end AD talent, early indicators show a trend brewing here that’s worth monitoring.
Charlotte Sports Foundation prepping for second annual Ally Tipoff
Three 2024 NCAA Women’s Final Four squads are descending on Charlotte this week. The Ally Tipoff, now heading into its second year, is set to welcome South Carolina, N.C. State, Iowa and Virginia Tech to Spectrum Center on Sunday.
The Charlotte Sports Foundation, which oversees the event, has a grand vision of presenting a Final Four-like experience for the squads while in the Queen City.
So far, so good.
“It speaks to the event,” Charlotte Sports Foundation Executive Director Danny Morrison said. “What we hoped to accomplish, in concert with Ally, when we began this event was to make it the premier women's college regular season basketball event in the country.”
The Ally Tipoff averaged around 15,000 fans for the inaugural 2023 event between Iowa and Virginia Tech. Morrison projects similar-sized crowds this year. The CSF also netted a three-year extension that runs through 2026. Ally remains the title sponsor, while Hendrick Automotive and Belk have signed on as associate sponsors.
“[Ally] made the decision on being title partner in 24 hours,” Morrison said. “You just don't find that happen very much.”
Speed reads
- League sources told me that the Big 12 circulated an NIL agreement template to its schools in recent weeks that would effectively spell out, among other things, terms, services, payments and the timing of payments to athletes.
- Be it with ESPN and CBS Sports, the Big East and the AAC, Mike Aresco’s career mirrored the rise of college sports in America, and in this week's magazine, SBJ's Bret McCormick profiles the retired commissioner as the sixth member and final member of the 2024 Class of Champions: Pioneers & Innovators.
- The Big Ten's new West Coast contingent of schools is helping Big Ten Network to a 9% viewership gain this season, BTN President Francois McGillicuddy tells SBJ's Mollie Cahillane.
- While Deion Sanders and Colorado football aren’t producing the massive TV audiences seen during his first season coaching the Buffaloes, the numbers are still strong this season, reports SBJ’s Austin Karp.
- Speaking at SBJ’s Dealmakers in D.C., Avenue Capital Group Chair, CEO and co-founder Marc Lasry remains bullish on investing in college sports, even as others are eyeing the sector -- and he expects "a number" of schools will make deals with private equity funds "by the end of next year," writes SBJ's Na'Andre Emerson.
- College venues and premium fan experiences are two of the drivers of private equity investment, reports SBJ's Ben Fischer from a panel at SBJ's Dealmakers conference last week.
- Teamworks began piloting a new digital banking solution, called Teamworks Wallet, with college athletic programs and NIL collectives, including Purdue and the Boilermaker Alliance and Georgia and the Classic City Collective, notes SBJ's Rob Schaefer.