SBJ Unpacks: Frustration with Big Ten, SEC mounts over college sports bill

Tonight in Unpacks: As the Protect College Sports Act progresses out of a key Senate committee, Yankees President Randy Levine, the chair of President Trump’s college sports task force, voices frustration over the SEC and Big Ten’s opposition to the bill, reports SBJ’s Ben Portnoy.

Also tonight:

• Shinnecock Hills, smaller footprint shape U.S. Open
• Military at the front of NASCAR’s San Diego race
• MLB proposes amateur system overhaul, international draft
• Op-ed: Why your sponsorship dollars are wasted if you’re not playing

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses Caitlin Clark becoming the fifth active WNBA player to get a signature shoe, NASCAR and Ford announcing a Veteran’s Day exhibition race, impressions of the A’s in-construction ballpark in Las Vegas and more.

PUBLISHING NOTICE: SBJ Unpacks will not publish Friday, June 19, for the Juneteenth holiday. Unpacks will return Monday, June 22.

Yankees President Randy Levine doesn’t sound annoyed. If anything, he sounds increasingly frustrated. The longtime Bronx Bombers executive has found himself at the center of college sports’ ongoing debate over its future as chair of President Trump’s college sports task force.

Thursday afternoon, just hours after the Protect College Sports Act progressed out of the Senate Commerce Committee via a 19-9 bipartisan vote, Levine offered a blunt assessment.

“One has to ask, ‘Is it a possibility that maybe [the SEC and Big Ten] really don’t want change?’” Levine said. “Maybe they like the present system the way it is. And that’s OK. Just admit it.”

The Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan effort from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), is college sports’ most ambitious legislative attempt yet to create a federal framework around NIL, athlete compensation and governance issues.

The process here, however, hasn’t followed the usual cadences.

The bill has gotten this far without the support of either the Big Ten or SEC -- the most powerful constituents in the matters this legislation would regulate.

The leagues have largely taken issue with two major stipulations in the initial bill: 1) That conferences generating more than $1B in revenue (the SEC and Big Ten) may not expand beyond their current membership and 2) that it opens the door to wider pooling of media rights.

Language around those points have been revised such that the clause around conference expansion would apply to each of the existing Power Four leagues, while the pooling of media rights remains a concern for the SEC and Big Ten, who suggest it is not actually a “voluntary” option.

“We continue to believe revisions are needed to secure our support for the bill,” the leagues said in a joint statement that dropped the moment Thursday morning’s hearing began. “Despite our sustained engagement and good faith efforts, these critical revisions have not been accepted.”

The pooling of media rights has been a pillar of an agenda pushed by Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell, also a member of Trump’s college sports task force. The concept hinges on the belief schools merging their media rights together would bring millions, if not billions, more dollars into the ecosystem rather than the fractured media rights approach of current day.

The Big Ten and SEC have been staunchly opposed. Each enjoys a massive advantage in annual rights fees over the rest of the college sports ecosystem. Any kind of pooling of rights would reduce the financial gap between the two conferences and the rest of Division I athletics.

Campbell, meanwhile, is asking for more open-mindedness on the premise.

“I would invite the SEC and Big Ten to be engaged and constructive in the next stage of this process,” he said during a joint-call with Levine on Thursday afternoon. “... We are moving forward even at their objection, because it’s that important to the country, but we really, truly do want them to be involved and engaged.”

Cruz began Thursday’s proceedings with an extended defense of the Protect College Sports Act, it’s merits and why those within the Senate, and, ultimately, the House, ought to act in good faith to move the legislation forward.

“Any serious solution must begin with reality,” Cruz said. “The NIL era is here. The Protect College Sports Act embraces this new environment, while establishing the rules necessary to end the chaos.”

“Reality” in Levine’s mind seems to suggest the Big Ten and SEC remain unconvinced. The conferences suggested as much in their earlier joint statement, though their presidents and chancellors pushed back on the assertion they have been disengaged on the issues at hand in a release on Monday night.

“From the time the legislation was introduced, our member universities have been engaged, vocal, and collaborative in evaluating the bill and identifying ways to improve it,” the second statement read, in part.

Is the Big Ten and SEC’s opposition enough to hinder the bill’s chances in the Senate? Perhaps.

The 72 hours leading into Thursday morning’s proceedings were filled with dozens of statements related to the PCSA. The NBPA and MLBPA were among those that voiced support. As did the National Association of Basketball Coaches, a group spearheaded by Craig Robinson, the brother-in-law of President Barack Obama.

Detractors included varying athlete labor groups such as Athletes.org and the The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Sports Council -- a federation of dozens of labor unions.

Nonetheless, legislation continues to advance.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), a member of the Commerce Committee who voted in favor of Cruz and Cantwell’s bill Thursday, holds authority to introduce the bill on the Senate floor. That could come any time in the weeks ahead.

Whether the SEC and Big Ten come around by then isn’t clear, but Congress isn’t waiting for an answer.

“I know my colleagues have concerns about the SEC and Big Ten,” Cantwell said in the closing minutes of Thursday’s markup. “But what we did today is say we are not going to let the most powerful and richest conferences dictate to the rest of America what’s going to happen to 500,000 athletes.”

This week’s U.S. Open on Long Island will be played at one of the cathedrals of golf, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, where there will be a smaller footprint than is typical for the United States Golf Association.

The USGA has set up three “anchor sites” for the Open: Pinehurst, Oakmont Country Club and Pebble Beach Golf Links. While Shinnecock is not an anchor site, it is what USGA Chief Commercial Officer Jon Podany described as a “core” U.S. Open site, along with Merion Golf Club and The Country Club outside Boston. They are smaller and tougher logistically to navigate, but are among the most highly regarded clubs in the country.

Total attendance at Shinnecock will come in around 155,000. Last year, Oakmont drew 209,000, and in 2024, Pinehurst attracted 220,000.

“We strategically feel like, over the five-year period, if we have some Pinehurst and Pebbles and Oakmonts in that five years, then we can afford to go to the Shinnecock and Merion and Country Clubs, where we’re going to have a little smaller footprint,” Podany said. “It balances out.”

Shinnecock is one of five founding clubs of the USGA, and the second U.S. Open was played there in 1896. Also, it’s the only club to host the Open in three different centuries.

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There are a handful of reasons for the smaller footprint, one being ingress and egress to the golf course at its remote location. Said Podany: “We don’t want people sitting in traffic for two hours.”

The USGA has made efforts to alleviate traffic concerns. At the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black last fall, traffic was a major point of contention in and out of the golf course. At Shinnecock Hills, which is far more remote than Bethpage Black, a train stop is across the street from the golf course. Organizers have also added a dedicated shuttle bus lane to bring attendees to and from the club.

“Our strategy has been that we’re willing to go to some smaller-footprint sites because we think it’s important to the history, tradition, heritage of the U.S. Open, and Shinnecock is certainly one of those,” Podany said. “So we have to right-size attendance and hospitality to make sure that we can deliver a good experience at a place like Shinnecock.”

Hospitality highlights

One area of right-sizing at Shinnecock will be on the hospitality side. In 2024, the USGA introduced its “1895 Club,” a massive structure built into the 18th-hole grandstand at Pinehurst No. 2. Last year at Oakmont, 1895 was a free-standing structure in the middle of the golf course.

This year at Shinnecock, the 1895 Club is part of the “Village on 17,” a double-decker venue overlooking the penultimate par-3 17th hole. Passes to 1895 featuring a five-day package (Wednesday through Sunday) can be had for $14,000, while daily passes cost between $3,200 and $4,000.

One of the agreements with Shinnecock Hills, Podany said, is that the USGA would essentially build fewer structures on the property than when it last hosted the tournament in 2018. “You’ll see a cleaner presentation of the golf course,” he said.

The USGA is using more double-decker structures for hospitality. Because of the increased limited inventory and natural inflation, sales were tracking about 50% higher than 2018, Podany said. He also noted that sales would end up about $800,000 to $1 million higher than the USGA anticipated across all hospitality.

The USGA will once again have a 34,000-square-foot merchandise pavilion. However, there won’t be a second satellite pavilion, like at Oakmont.

Media moves

On the media side, this week is the first U.S. Open under the USGA’s new media rights deal that was struck with NBC Sports and Versant late last summer.

The Open will continue to have a minimum of 25 hours of coverage. But in a twist, the final hour of play on Thursday and Friday will be carried on NBC, NBC Sports Network and Peacock.

In recent years, the last hour of coverage was bumped to Peacock, with mostly qualifiers and lesser-name players completing their rounds. Now, select tee times for big-name players will be pushed back, meaning they will conclude their rounds coverage wraps up. Thursday will conclude on Peacock and NBC Sports Network, while Friday will wrap solely on NBC.

“We always peak at the very end of a broadcast for golf,” NBC Sports President Rick Cordella told Sports Business Journal when the deal was struck. “That time between 7-8 [p.m.] is a great time for golf.”

NBC and Versant’s deal with the USGA runs through 2032.

J.J. Spaun’s win in last year’s Open at Oakmont averaged 5.4 million viewers on NBC on Sunday, an 8% drop over the year prior for Bryson DeChambeau’s victory. Viewership numbers likely will receive a boost from Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel methodology this week, as well as from the return to Shinnecock Hills.

It was also announced last week that former U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk will join USA Sports’ broadcast team as an Open analyst and will work the Open Championship and other PGA Tour events throughout 2026. He served as a USA analyst for a handful of events earlier this year and received mostly positive reviews.

Furyk, the U.S. Ryder Cup captain for next year’s matches in Ireland, has been seen by some in the industry as a possible lead analyst for NBC’s golf coverage in the future. NBC has shuffled its booth around since Johnny Miller retired in 2019, and the network had Paul Azinger as lead analyst for a handful of years before testing out others throughout 2024, including Brandel Chamblee and Luke Donald.

Now, Kevin Kisner is in his second year in the lead analyst chair for NBC. But the 42-year-old Kisner has continued to play a handful of PGA Tour events, and also officially joined Barstool Sports’ “Fore Play” podcast in March.

Furyk, meanwhile, is 56 and has played sparingly on the PGA Tour Champions due to injuries. Asked by SBJ in March if he would be open to more broadcast work, Furyk said he would be interested.

“It’s not that I miss the travel, but I guess I missed being around the tour. I miss being around the guys,” Furyk said. “And TV has a little of that same feel for golf in one respect. There’s a lot of preparation that goes into it, a lot of practice that goes into it, getting ready, and then the camera goes on. It’s a lot like hitting a golf shot.”

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“I feel the need for speed” -- Tom Cruise in Top Gun

SAN DIEGO -- Turning a base into a race is apparently right up the military’s alley. Out here in the most southern town of California, where the surf generally meets the turf -- not pavement -- they’re cutting the ribbon this weekend on a street track that deserves a salute.

Sponsored fittingly by a defense contractor, NASCAR’s Anduril 250 on Sunday will be a 3.4-mile, 16-turn journey through Naval Base Coronado that weaves by aircraft carriers, operational runways, double-domed hangars, luxury boats, helicopters, fighter jets, a beach and the infamous I Bar. If the Clash at the Coliseum was a retrofit and the Chicago Street Race was an inner-city dream, then this race at the base –- during an active war in Iran -- is the anomaly that can happen when cars and commanding officers unite.

“I’m equal parts terrified and excited at all times because truly we are taking over a United States military base,” said Amy Lupo, president of NASCAR San Diego.

If it sounds unprecedented, that’s because it is. NASCAR has never staged a race at an active military site, and this one has its roots in a San Diego hunt two years ago and concludes this weekend with “SVG” (Shane van Gisbergen) and “Wookie” coming together as one. Buckle up.

The origins are in the Clash at the Coliseum in L.A., where, first in 2022, NASCAR transformed the USC football field into a quarter-mile track. Lupo helped lead the event, and following the Clash’s third and final rendition of 2024, she said, “We started to look, ‘Well, how do we keep racing in Southern California?’ The Coliseum was never meant to be a permanent fix.”

When NASCAR COO Ben Kennedy was in L.A. for SBJ’s World Congress of Sports that year, he joined a group that included Lupo, NASCAR SVP/Design & Development Derek Muldowney and NASCAR Sr Dir of Design & Development Jeremy Casperson for a tour down the coast.

One of the initial stops was about 100 miles south at the Del Mar Racetrack in North County San Diego -- a charming and historic 89-year home to horseracing described famously by the Bing Crosby song, “Where the Surf Meets the Turf.” The idea was to cover the dirt with concrete, but Lupo said it took about five minutes to say, “This isn’t going to work.” First of all, there’d be horses running from July to November -- making the timing complex -- not to mention the coinciding San Diego County Fair on site every summer.

Since San Diego is a military town, they hightailed it farther down I-5 to the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, near La Jolla, which already housed the annual Miramar Air Show. “But that’s completely run by the Marines, so it takes a lot of resources for them to put that together,” Casperson said. “So I think them having two events of that size would’ve been pretty challenging.”

They drove farther down I-5 to the Point Loma peninsula, where Sports San Diego CEO Mark Neville had one more locale in mind. He had them climb specifically to the Cabrillo National Monument, 422 feet above sea level, and said, “Hey now, let’s look over here.”

There it was, the Naval Air Station North Island (NASNI), in all of its massive glory. They couldn’t visit in person because they didn’t have military clearance, because the runway was a premier aviation hub, because it was a training home to Navy SEALs and commands such as Amphibious Construction Battalion One.

“But we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do that,’” Casperson said.

They searched it on Google Earth and consulted Muldowney, a native of Dublin who had spent time living in San Diego. He informed the group, “We can put a track there,” beginning a process that would soon cross cultures.

They were eventually permitted to tour the base, hosted by NASNI’S then commanding officer Capt. Ladislao Montero, whose call sign, or nickname, was “Monty.” The military seemed enthusiastic. As talks advanced and the street race was greenlit, Montero was replaced in June 2025 by a new just-as-helpful commanding officer, Capt. Loren Jacobi. Whose call sign was: Wookie.

“You’ve got to learn each other’s languages,” Casperson said. “The Navy speaks a different language, and we [at NASCAR] speak a different language. Most of them are aviators, so they have a call sign. And so on the radio, you’re hearing, ‘Wookie.’ If I just said ‘Wookie’ to you, you’d be like, ‘OK, who’s that?’ And they’ve got other terms. You’ve got to learn things like SECCO and OPSO -- which is security officer and operation officer. They have a lot of acronyms and, man, I catch myself talking to my wife all the time in different navy lingo.”

As the partnership evolved and the course began undergoing construction on June 1 -- all while the base was active and the country still at war -- the languages officially crisscrossed. To help with the build, NASCAR borrowed members of the Navy’s skilled Amphibious Construction Battalion, otherwise known as Seabees (or CB’s). In military settings, Seabees “build and defend military infrastructure in hostile or austere environments” and, in April, they expertly rescued NASA’s Artemis II crew from the Pacific Ocean. But now they were getting to ... build a race course?

“Believe me, there’s a sense of ownership and gratitude they have for it,” Casperson said.

Together, over 17 total days, NASCAR and those Seabees built a racetrack -- dubbed the Qualcomm Circuit -- that has just under 3,200 concrete barrier sections. In all, 2,000 loads of materials were used to prop up 40,000 grandstand seats, hospitality tents and a driving surface that goes on for days.

“The sheer size of it,” Lupo said. “I mean, the track itself is 3.4 miles. Our colleagues at Talladega Super Speedway ... typically do social media posts, and they’ll show six of the Alabama football fields inside Talladega. We can fit Talladega inside of San Diego’s track. It’s crazy how big this place is.”

Somehow, they overcame the language barrier along the way. NASCAR officials would say, “Hey, the grandstands go in Turn 3,” and the military wouldn’t know what a Turn 3 was. The military would say, “It’s in the stern of the car,” and NASCAR would say, “You mean at the back of the car?” NASCAR would say, “Chicane” or “Pit Road” or “Front Stretch,” and there would be military blank stares.

“One email would turn into six, just trying to explain exactly where we’re at,” Casperson said.

But they figured it out in the end perhaps over a beer at I Bar -- the Coronado drinking establishment that inspired the bar scenes in Tom Cruise’s movie “Top Gun” -- and the mammoth street course was easily completed ahead of time. The jets for the flyover will actually take off from the base and land on the base. They’ve even held an on-base fantasy draft, of sorts, where every command unit has been assigned one race driver to root for.

Word is SVG’s biggest fan is ... Wookie.

MLB on Thursday proposed an overhaul of its amateur system that would include an international draft. Starting next season, there would be 12-round international and domestic drafts (down on the domestic side from 20) for MLB, with equal bonus pools of $200M (down on the domestic side from $358.7M).

Beginning in 2028, players would need to be age 20 by Sept. 1 of the draft year, and at least two years removed from high school graduation, to be eligible for the domestic draft. Teams would be prohibited from trading first-round selections in consecutive drafts. No team would be eligible to receive a lottery pick in three straight years.

“Over the last several years, college baseball has undergone a remarkable transformation. Expanded scholarships, NIL opportunities, revenue sharing, and significant investments in facilities and player development have made college baseball an increasingly important pathway that is producing major league-ready talent at an accelerated rate,” MLB said in a statement. “Today’s top programs provide players with resources, competition, and national exposure that were unimaginable a decade ago. Our proposal is designed to build on that momentum to benefit the game at the college, minor league and major league levels. By creating a draft system centered around college-aged players and making most college players eligible one year earlier, more players will benefit from both a college education and an elite development environment while reaching professional baseball—and ultimately the major leagues—more quickly. We believe these changes will strengthen college baseball and deepen fans’ connection to the next generation of major league stars. We look forward to working with the MLBPA throughout the bargaining process to modernize the domestic amateur system in a way that benefits players, clubs, and fans.”

On the international side, players would have to be 18 by Sept. 1 of their draft year (up from 17 by Sept. 1 of their sign year). MLB believes this would create transparency in the signing process through a hard-slotted system that would eliminate the practice of “handshake agreements” between teams and players. MLB will also work with the Dominican government, independent trainers and the union to establish protections and safeguards for players training in the country.

“It is long past time to reform the international amateur system in ways that would address challenges and benefit future players. The enhanced transparency of the International Draft that we are proposing is a common-sense step forward that best addresses the root causes of corruption in the current system,” MLB said in the statement. “Our vision for the new international system reduces the pressure on young athletes by giving them the chance to grow and develop, keeps kids in school longer while they pursue a career in baseball, and creates more playing opportunities for the older players who are left behind in today’s system.”

The union responded in a statement:

“Today, MLB made another set of proposals that are flat out bad for baseball, ones that would cripple the next generation of players and damage the future of our game. They would, among other things: Eliminate over a billion dollars in player compensation from the international and domestic system over the next five years, with a $400 million reduction from 2026 to 2027 alone. Destroy fundamental player rights and remove talent from our sport by barring high school and junior college players (anyone under age 20) from the domestic draft. Abolish an entire year of international signings by delaying the first draft until at least September of 2027 (and as late as March of 2028), denying young international players the ability to start their professional careers. Players remain committed to bargaining in good faith and leaving baseball better than they found it – the league’s proposals fall woefully short.”

That whooshing sound you are hearing? It’s the sound of the 365 D-I schools and their agencies taking to market the ad patch rights granted them by the NCAA six months ago. Keep in mind that the college football season begins Aug. 29, and you can account for that cacophony.

Never before has so much new inventory been available in the college market simultaneously. Even before you address pricing (we’ll get to that), there are divergent opinions on how to best sell college uni patches.

Should those rights be packaged across every university sport? Should basketball and football be bundled or sold separately? Would a separate women’s sports platform be more saleable, or perhaps a package of Olympic sports, or sports with something in common, like baseball and softball or men’s and women’s soccer, or the like?

“It’s a difficult space to navigate right now, because, like a lot in colleges, new rules and structure are developing,” said Paul Archey, president of JMI Sports Properties, which represents schools including Harvard, Kentucky, Pitt and Penn. “The most obvious thing is the opportunity, because it’s inventory no one’s had before.”

As for the packaging questions? Some of that will be dictated by the strengths and weaknesses of particular schools. Nonetheless, there are contrasting opinions.

Matt Yonan’s Tigris Marketing is assisting a Big Ten school on a patch sale. “It’s early, obviously, but today we’re thinking that there are 10-15 schools that can sell basketball and football separately and have success,” Yonan said. “We think most schools will bundle all sports.”

It’s a time for novel ideas, and we’ve come across two schools looking to sell patches on cheerleader unis, but as an asset in a larger deal.

“We’ve done the math and our projections are that it definitely makes more sense to separate basketball and football at most schools,” said Dan Griffis, president of global partnerships at Oak View Group. “Unbundling the two will give you 140% more.”

Griffis said Oak View will shortly sign two or three “geographically disparate” majors to sell patch inventory. “A blueblood school could get $3 million to $5 million for a basketball patch alone,” he added, “but there are schools that will find it easier to activate with one partner, so ...”

Playfly Sports is in the market with more than two dozen of the 75 colleges, universities and conferences it represents for multimedia rights.

“We’re trying to sell those bundled — you don’t want anyone cherry-picking the best sports at any school,” said Paul Asencio, the EVP/global partnerships at Playfly who assisted on one of the first big deals, LSU’s seven-year-agreement with Woodside Energy.

“The college market is already crowded, and across sports there’s lots of jersey patch inventory, but the interest is there, because other than the NFL, college sports are the last to allow this,” Asencio said. “Our conversations have been good, and so far, it’s not so much of the staple brands in sports, it’s new money. ... We’ve had a lot of conversations with CEOs and COOs who are alums or have kids at the school or both. That makes it different than the other patches.”

A growing appetite

The new NCAA rules allows teams as many as two 4-by-4 sponsor logos on uniforms and apparel. In case it gets oversaturated, the new regs allow for even more: an additional logo is allowed on equipment during preseason and regular-season play.

Other than LSU, some of the largest patch deals consummated so far include Arkansas with Tyson Foods, UNLV with Acesso Biologics, Memphis with FedEx and Michigan State with the MSU Federal Credit Union.

Uniform ad patches are just a portion of a growing commercial appetite among colleges and universities, catalyzed by NIL. According to Sponsor United data, within the Power Four (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC) and the Group of Five mid-majors (American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West and Sun Belt), there were 141 brands with visible logos, up from 101 brands the prior year and up 75 the year before that. Financial services brands accounted for 33% of the most recent deals, followed by health care at 11% and auto at 8%.

Looking at ad-patch revenues across the big five stick-and-ball leagues as a comp for where colleges might get to: Jersey patch revenue among them was $775 million for the most recently completed seasons for an increase of 5%. As a percentage of total revenues, figures patches account for 9% of revenue.

“You’ll hear about a lot of patch deals between now and September,” said SponsorUnited Founder/CEO Bob Lynch, “the incremental sponsorship revenues is what will be the most telling.”

As for the brand side, aka the (potential) buyers?

“We continue to see a lot of interest from our clients in the collegiate landscape,” said Momentum WW EVP/Partnerships Sampson Yimer (also a member of SBJ’s 2025 Forty Under 40 class). “They’ll just have to be sure inventory is in line with demand. But those large alumni bases of the big schools add a lot of value to these.”

First things first: Let’s understand the nuts and bolts of a new deal shared exclusively with the SBJ Tech newsletter between the USL and Kitman Labs, a 10 Most Innovative Sports Tech Companies from SBJ’s second cohort in 2024.

This multiyear agreement (financial terms were not shared with SBJ) will equip all 25 clubs in the USL Championship with Kitman Labs’ Performance Medicine Solution. The product serves as a hub of electronic medical records, built on top of Kitman’s iP: Intelligence Platform, an operating system created for team and player management.

Last year was Kitman Labs’ first linkage with the USL, working with the women’s Gainbridge Super League as the league-wide performance medicine provider. According to President/Competition and Administration Brett Luy, there was immediate recognition by the USL to push this into the men’s side, too.

“Their experience working with some of the country’s top professional sports leagues made it a seamless transition for our clubs to adopt,” Luy said. “The ability to centrally aggregate and manage medical data is a key driver in the continued growth and success of our medical program.”

Why it matters

What makes this significant for the USL? For starters, it receives access to an ecosystem that’s deployed all over the world by teams and leagues across numerous sports. Kitman Labs counts the Premier League, MLS and NWSL among its more than 2,000(!) clients.

Even more important, it gives the league a player health-managing asset as it eyes the launch of its future top division, USL Premier. The organizing body wants to stand it up by 2028, giving the USL a soccer pyramid structure on the men’s side that enables club promotion and relegation, mirroring that of the biggest leagues in the world. USL Premier clubs will also use the Performance Medicine Solution when the time comes.

Stephen Smith, Kitman Labs CEO, shared that regardless of the sport, the needs of teams and leagues are complex. But especially on the medical side, without a unifying system, so much clerical work is required to input that data that comes from team physicians.

Maybe a player sees their own specialist. Maybe an international tour produces an injury where someone needs to be seen at the closest medical center in a different country. For the USL Championship, this is an effort to start avoiding that logistical data nightmare.

“The ambition that they have — the professionalization that they have — this is the same type of behavior that we see from the billion-dollar leagues, and that’s probably the most impressive thing for me,” Smith said.

The growth of the product

The USL will benefit from significant time and money investment by Kitman Labs to produce a solution that provides the clearest picture of athlete health. Smith estimated that nearly five years and $25 million went into enhancing the Performance Medicine Solution, which is highlighted by constant boosts to the user interface and 80-plus integrations with hospitals and healthcare systems so far to create smoother information pathways.

While Smith has built Kitman Labs since its 2012 founding, he’s noticed a growing reliance on outside medical care for professional athletes. Now consider that work, multiplied by 25 for each soccer club and even more for larger rosters like football, and that’s a staggering number of inputs for the poor soul who has to be the medical record go-between.

And recently, Kitman Labs has partnered with Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise to create My iP, a visualization tool inside of its iP: Intelligence Platform to help a user visualize the data that Kitman Labs ingests with a boost of automation. A coach can look at the bigger picture of team health and availability, or a data scientist can build out dialed-in dashboards to sift through mounds of stats and measurements.

That was announced toward the end of May, and is the latest mile marker when it comes to Kitman Labs’ constant pursuit of the clearest picture of an athlete’s health.

“We decided that it wasn’t good enough in this industry that athletes didn’t have the same capabilities,” Smith said. “And we decided to invest and bring that same type of technology to the world of sport.”

Sports brands didn’t miss the gaming revolution, but many are still misplaying it.

Over the past decade, leagues, sponsors and marketers have poured increasing budgets into esports, creator partnerships and in‑game placements. On paper, these strategies appear progressive. In practice, however, the same mistake keeps repeating itself: treating gaming as just another media channel instead of a place where people actually spend time.

This misunderstanding is easy to spot, and once you do, you can’t unsee it.

Sports brands discovered gaming as a marketing channel a long time ago. There are now many ways to get involved. In esports tournaments, leagues from the NBA to Formula 1 have run parallel digital competitions. In-game advertising, with stadium-style placements inside titles such as EA Sports FC and NBA 2K, reaches hundreds of millions of players. With influencer and creator campaigns on Twitch or YouTube, even a single streamer’s authentic endorsement is far more effective than a broadcast advertisement. And last but not least, there is social media, which increasingly merges the feeds of gaming and sports.

The most significant shift has been the move toward integration. Today’s gamers don’t just want to see a brand logo; they want to experience the brand within the game or event itself. Today’s audiences also expect brands to provide real value. If there’s no added benefit or meaningful engagement, they simply won’t pay attention.

Each of these channels has matured into a legitimate discipline. However, there’s a new layer underneath all of them, and most brands still don’t know what to do with it: virtual worlds.

Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft: These are platforms where the audience doesn’t just watch or scroll — they inhabit them. The question isn’t “How long did they look at our ad?” but rather, “How long did they choose to stay inside our brand?” Generations Z and Alpha spend more time on Roblox and Fortnite than on social media, including 39 percent more time than on TikTok and YouTube combined. These platforms are the future of gaming. They’re where these generations already live.

This is exactly why the wrong question here is: “Where should we put our logo?”

Gaming sponsorships don’t work anymore by just placing a logo. It was probably never the right model to begin with, but it’s especially counterproductive in virtual worlds. If your brand appears as a banner on a loading screen, you haven’t sponsored anything. You’ve announced that you don’t understand the space.

What does a real activation look like?

In January 2025, the German soccer league DFL (Bundesliga) became the first European sports league to launch on Roblox. A new creation, the Bundesliga Clubhouse, offered an authentic experience through the integration of the brand within five distinct, high-traffic Roblox environments. These environments included obstacle courses, a free kick simulator, and a virtual hub where ESPN and Topps had their own interactive presence. Fans could collect exclusive user-generated content (UGC) items, customize their avatars, and immerse themselves further in the Bundesliga brand through gameplay. In the first four days alone, the initial integration received over 1.3 million visits. The full campaign reached 15 million unique users, who spent an average of nine minutes and 45 seconds on the platform.

Nine minutes and 45 seconds! Compare that to a preroll ad that people skip after five seconds.

The critical deciding factor wasn’t the budget or the platform — it was the philosophy. The experience had to be native, not imported. Peer Naubert, the Bundesliga’s International CEO, put it precisely: The goal was to meet fans where they already are and create something that feels authentic to them, not just recognizable to the league.

The pattern is spreading — for better or worse

FIFA and Gamefam brought all 13 teams from the 2025 Club World Cup to Roblox. They created an experience that mirrored the real-world event, complete with authentic sponsors, branded merchandise, and live bracket updates. The results? 20 million gameplay sessions and 5.5 million hours of engagement. Of the surveyed players, 61 percent said that playing the game made them want to watch the 2026 FIFA Club World Cup. This figure should make every sports marketing director sit up and take notice.

This case shows that games in virtual worlds, such as Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite, can inspire real-world broadcasting. The virtual world influences the physical one.

Meanwhile, more than 600 brand activations took place on Roblox in 2025 alone, with more than 210 brands having a presence on the platform. This volume signals that the platform has transitioned from an experimental stage to becoming standard practice. However, quantity without quality produces noise, not results.

The authenticity problem nobody wants to name

Here’s what I tell every client that comes to us with a gaming brief: These communities have extraordinarily sensitive authenticity detectors. Brands can gain access to a creator’s community if they give the creator the necessary freedom. Brands that don’t allow creators to be themselves and support them organically will find that their message falls flat and fails to effectively reach the audience. The same principle applies to platform activations. If you show up on Roblox and act as if you were on a stadium perimeter board, the community will either ignore or mock you — to the point of negatively affecting brand perception!

Three things determine success

First, commit to the platform’s logic, not yours. Each platform has its own aesthetics, economy, and social dynamics. Learn them or fail.

Second, build for repeat engagement, not a one-off spectacle. The average number of activations per brand on Roblox increased to 1.8 in 2025, up from 1.4 in 2023. Brands are realizing that a single campaign is merely a trial and not a long-term strategy.

Third, measure what matters. Impressions are a vanity metric in virtual worlds. Session time, repeat visits, UGC item collections, and community-generated content around your activation tell you whether you have built something that people actually want to spend time in.

Virtual worlds are not the next social media. They’re more demanding than that. Social media allows you to broadcast. Virtual worlds, on the other hand, require you to participate; they’re a form of social gaming. That’s a harder task. But it’s also a far more valuable one.

Alexander Albrecht is co-founder and managing director of Build A Rocket (creators of the Bundesliga Clubhouse). Now part of Sportfive, the agency operates internationally with 70 people across six offices.

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