SBJ’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, presented by Learfield, is off and running in Las Vegas.
Tuesday marked the start of the two-day event at the Cosmopolitan that included a number of power players in college sports. Here were a few of my highlights from Day 1:
- My colleague Austin Karp kicked things off with a one-on-one alongside CFP Executive Director Rich Clark. Clark sounded off a variety of topics, such as the future of conference championship games and the vitriol around the selection committee's work. “From my perspective and what I saw happen in the room, there was a lot of integrity in the room.”
- My boss Abe Madkour also hosted a panel that included Learfield’s Cole Gahagan, Wasserman's/LA28's Casey Wasserman and Ohio State AD Ross Bjork around driving revenue. I thought Bjork’s comments around the shifting landscape summed things up fairly succinctly: “We're not professional athletics, but we're sure as heck not amateur athletics anymore. We kind of tilted over here a little bit with education in the center.”
- Plaintiffs' attorney Jeffrey Kessler was among those breaking down the finer points of the House settlement. Kessler’s address also came just hours after a letter from Grant House, Sedona Prince and Nya Harrison -- the named plaintiffs in the House case -- was sent to Judge Claudia Wilken, asking her to help create a players’ association. “[College sports] will not look dramatically different from how it looks today,” Kessler said. “But the participants in it, and especially the athletes, are going to have a very, very different life, because they're going to feel a sense of satisfaction and fairness now being able to share in the revenues that their sports generate.”
For college revenue growth, ‘everything had to be on the table’
When it comes to driving revenue growth amid the changing landscape of college sports, “everything has to be on the table. Everything has to be considered,” said Ohio State AD Ross Bjork to the crowd today at SBJ’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, presented by Learfield.
While Bjork noted these potential new opportunities have “got to fit your institution, your values, your traditions,” college sports is “definitely becoming more like the pros on the business side and the structural side.”
Casey Wasserman said it’s “not an accident that college sports is starting to look a lot more like professional sports.” The chair of LA28, who also continues to lead his eponymous agency, noted the “facilitation of player compensation has required, frankly, that you have to generate more revenue than you used to because you can't be stuck in the old system with all these massive new expenses coming on board.” Wasserman: “If you've got expense pressures and you have to generate more revenue in sports, the only way to generate more revenue is create more inventory or get more money for the inventory you have.”
One potential new revenue source is jersey patches, but Learfield President and CEO Cole Gahagan noted those come with “multiple layers of challenges that as an industry we have to work through,” though the company just launched its own effort to secure these deals. Gahagan said if they “don't come up with a solution for how” performance brands like Adidas, Nike and Under Armour can “get on board and be happy with this opportunity, we won't be able to go down the rest of the gauntlet and solve for the other problems next.”
Other insights from the “Driving Revenue Growth in College Sports: What’s Moving the Needle Now and into the Future” panel include:
- Gahagan on data management: “We have to continue to get better at data use because connectivity to our fans ultimately is going to drive every single thing that we do. Donor development, ticket sales, food and beverage, retail, multimedia rights propositions to brand partners and so on and so forth. So data's got to be at the center of every single thing that we do.”
- Wasserman on the untapped monetization of college football: “The only way to do that is scheduling and organizationally. ... But if you monetize that in a more efficient way to capture the value, one or two things going to happen. Either football's going to leave the system and keep all the money, which is a disaster for college sports, or that incremental money fixes most of the problems in these athletic departments.”
- Bjork on keeping focus on education: “We're in the education business, but yet we are entertainment. We're a hybrid sort of enterprise. ... We've shifted that narrative, and the logistics are going to roll out, but then how do we get back to look, we're changing these young men and women, we're changing their lives through education.”
- Wasserman on the value of content: “Content's one of those things that's just not, without it being aggregated is not that valuable. ... What people want to watch about Ohio State is the Buckeyes play on the football field. ... All the behind the scenes stuff is so overcooked now that no one wants to see it.”
How sponsors, organizers view the future of bowl games in a CFP world
Despite an expanded CFP and players opting out of non-CFP games to prepare for the next steps in their careers, the demand for college bowl season remains high, but the games need to remain flexible if they want to thrive.
“We have to be able to evolve in college athletics,” Las Vegas Bowl Executive Director John Saccenti said. “I’d like for us, as a group, to come together ... whether that’d be pooling teams and tiering teams and just being able to work together as a collective group.”
Speaking at SBJ’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, presented by Learfield today, panelists discussed the importance of bowl season, the challenges it faces and some possible solutions in an effort to keep interest alive. (The discussion followed CFP Executive Director Rich Clark's chat about his first Selection Sunday with the committee and more) Below are some of the highlights:
- Bowl Season Executive Director Nick Carparelli on giving players incentives: “There will be a role for NIL in bowl games, but it has to be in cooperation with the conference partners and the institutional partners. Contrary to popular belief, bowl games are not flush with extra cash sitting around that they just waste. The time will come. You're seeing it in basketball, where payments are going directly to student athletes.”
- ESPN’s Kurt Dargis on the importance of bowl games to TV partners: “There's a natural appetite around the holidays for football and bowl games. And if some of these games were played in the regular season, they wouldn't get near the audience that you got on the Pop-Tarts game last year, the Cheez-It game last year. Games might not even make it to ABC or ESPN. But the combo of the time of year, the fact that the word is bowl is on each of these games, just makes it more attractive for both the hardcore football fan and the casual viewers around the holidays. People still want to watch bowl games, regardless of what's going on with the playoff ... it's obviously an unknown now with the expanded playoff, but we really feel like it's going to continue.”
- Pop-Tarts Brand Manager Alexander Sotiropoulos on the value of bowl games for sponsors: “What a brand like Pop-Tarts cares about is sales. It’s really those lower funnel metrics. We were so fortunate that after last year's game, we sold 21 million more toaster pastries in the eight weeks following the game than the eight weeks prior to the game. We had eight straight weeks of share growth. So it's really those low funnel measurements that I think attract sponsors as far as how they view ROI.”
- Florida Citrus Sports CEO Steve Hogan on the biggest challenges ahead: “The future of everything that's in and around the playoff, everything that's in the postseason, economics are going to dictate how many of these survive. Very few in athletics say, ‘Hey, we're going to do this at a major loss in order to provide the experience that these kids deserve.’ So, economics, over the next couple of years, are going to dictate how many spots there are for how many games, title sponsors, TV, windows, tickets sold -- all that needs to work. We haven't seen that flush out yet. It's going to flush out, in my opinion, into the next season or two.”
Big Ten, Abbott partner for $1 million grant
One of the Big Ten’s more prominent partnerships reached a notable milestone on Saturday.
The conference and health care company Abbott awarded a $1 million grant to Nebraska to “advance student or community health” as the winners of the “ We Give Blood Drive,” which was held at each of the Big Ten’s 18 campuses over the last four months.
As part of the effort, nearly 20,000 students, alumni and fans donated blood during the competition that ran from Sept. 26 through Dec. 6. The event is also slated to be held again next fall.
"With the U.S. experiencing the worst blood shortage in a generation, Abbott saw an opportunity to support rebuilding the nation's blood supply,” said Melissa Brotz, Abbott’s chief marketing and communications officer. "Through our partnership with the Big Ten, we tapped into the inherent competitiveness of college rivalries to encourage students, alumni and fans to donate blood."
The blood drive marked the conference’s first promotion across its 18 members. It also received support from its media partners -- CBS, Fox, NBC and the Big Ten Network. As part of the agreement, Abbott got on-field signage during last weekend's Big Ten championship between Oregon and Penn State.
Abbott also worked with athletes on each of the Big Ten’s varying campuses through NIL deals that functionally worked as influencer partnerships between the company and athletes. Former players like Matt Leinart, Archie Griffin and Tom Brady, too, helped promote awareness around the campaign earlier this fall.
"This was the first time the Big Ten has partnered with a health care company, and it was an honor to name Abbott our first-ever health science and diagnostics partner," said Tyler Kupper, VP/corporate partnerships for the Big Ten. "The impact is proven in the results, and the number of lives saved demonstrates the powerful role sports and competition can play in making a difference."
Speed reads
- In this week's cover story, I dive into the big business behind the Army-Navy football rivalry as both prepare for their 125th meeting on Saturday. Related: CBS agreed to a 10-year extension of its deal to broadcast the game through 2038.
- Since Learfield recapitalized its $1.1 billion in debt in September 2023, the company has seen record financial growth, reeling in $1.2 billion in gross revenue. Part of this is coming from new efforts such as its “Performance Partner Alliance” program, which is designed to deliver jersey patch solutions for university partners and sway apparel partners to allow such inventory.
- This year’s CFP features some of the most well-resourced athletic departments in America. Of the 10 schools in the field with publicly available budgetary information, four of the top 10 and five of the top 15 revenue generating athletic departments in the country made the field.
- NOCAP Sports, Exos and a yet-to-be-announced production company are slated to launch the “Athlete Showcase” -- an NFL Combine-style event that will connect elite transfer portal football players, agents and NIL collectives Jan. 5-7 in Dallas.
- Nations Group's latest project is Club Residences, an effort that SBJ's Bret McCormick reports is to provide new revenue for universities and their athletic departments by developing condominiums on what’s usually the most valuable real estate in a college town, next to the college football stadium.
- In his Forum this week, my boss Abe Madkour writes about Kevin White's new book, "A Good Sport: Reflections On A Full Life In College Sports." Madkour: "White blends the personal and professional -- from growing up in New York to becoming one of the top leaders in college sports. There are consistent themes over the 196-page book, to be released Jan. 17. ... He also chronicles the inner workings of leadership in college athletics and offers a vision for the future, a system in which three of his children -- Mike, Danny and Brian -- work daily."