LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The largest and longest-running collective supporting Name, Image and Likeness efforts for University of Louisville athletes, 502Circle, on Wednesday announced a partnership with Learfield Sports that will allow it to use the university's athletic logos and marks in efforts aimed at generating NIL revenue for athletes it has signed.
The agreement makes 502Circle the official NIL partner of the university and its media rights partner, and will open new avenues of growth as it looks to raise money for UofL-related NIL efforts.
"This really solidifies what we've been doing over the past year to get this thing going," said 502Circle president Dan Furman. "And it should give fans more faith and trust that we're doing the right things to put our student-athletes in good situations. It's exciting for us."
The organization launched officially in August of last year with the mission of becoming a place where fans and businesses could donate money to be used to support NIL opportunities for UofL athletes.
"Learfield and the 502Circle collective are both great assets to the University of Louisville and it's great to see them come together for this official partnership that will benefit all parties," Louisville athletics director Josh Heird said. "This formal collaboration will create new avenues for 502Circle to integrate even more with the UofL brand, build additional revenue streams for continued growth and provide more support than ever for our student-athletes through their Name, Image and Likeness."
Last month, 502Circle announced an incoming class of 40 athletes, adding to its existing roster of those who had partnered with the collective on NIL agreements. A month ago, the collective announced that it had entered whole-roster agreements with the women's basketball and women's volleyball programs, two of the more successful programs in the athletics department.
Over time, the hope is that fans will view the success of those programs, and improvements in football and other sports, as an outgrowth of the work that the collective has done in establishing NIL opportunities for players.
This arrangement allows for more integration between the collective and the university. It allows the collective to use UofL's official logo and marks, as well as to promote its efforts in athletic venues and on UofL radio broadcasts.
The space is still relatively new for fans, and Furman said it's important that they feel comfortable knowing that their support is going to the athletes, and that the university is comfortable with how it is doing business. Wednesday's agreement is another step in sending that message.
"I keep using the word trust," Furman said. "But it really does come down to that. We're here to support those kids and those athletes."
This kind of agreement between a university and collective is not new in college sports, but it's also not widespread. Tennessee, Ole Miss and other universities have similar agreements.
"It's not always the easiest thing to figure out because a lot of different people have to be involved," Furman said. "But this proves how supportive the department is of our student athletes, and how empowering they are to explore the NIL space, as they have been for years. ... This agreement also speaks volumes for John Penny (VP and general manager of Learfield's Louisville Sports Properties) and (Louisville AD) Josh Heird. They're buying into the fact that we're going to help the overall mission."
Furman said 502Circle would be rolling out a new membership model and initiative in coming weeks.
"We're excited," he said. "Fans will see a lot more. We're going to be very forward-facing in a lot of this to allow kids to build their brands."
The collective operates independently of the university, but works directly with athletes. Partnering with the school's media rights holder is a major step in bringing the parties together.
"We're thrilled to work with 502Circle as an official partner," Penny said. "This collaboration will allow 502Circle to raise the profile of the work they do to support student athletes through the use of official university branding and marketing assets across digital, print, broadcast and in-venue opportunities. We look forward to working with them to benefit all UofL student-athletes."
DISNEY (ESPN), SPECTRUM DISPUTE ROLLS ON
With no resolution of the dispute keeping Disney channels off of Charter's Spectrum Cable lineups, local fans are facing a second straight college football weekend without their local teams on cable television.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that Spectrum is unlikely to give in easily to the hefty carriage rates that Disney is seeking for ESPN and its other properties.
In a move that may signal the cable giant's resignation to major changes in the industry, Spectrum representatives have begun referring customers to a deal being offered by the Fubo streaming service to get two months at discounts of 25% or 30%, depending on the plan.
Phillip Swan, a journalist who runs tvanswerman.com, told the Associated Press, "I've covered carriage disputes for more years than I would like to remember, and I don't recall a TV provider ever offering its customers a discount to another TV provider during a channel blackout."
By making that move, Charter still hopes to provide the broadband service needed to connect to an outside streaming service, though that brings less revenue than a full cable package.
Disney, meanwhile, on Tuesday referred upset sports fans to its Hulu Live service, at $69.99 per month.
Most analysts expect the parties to come to an agreement but acknowledge that the unusual actions of the parties in this dispute do signal fundamental changes in the industry, and could also signal changes for the big money fueling many sports decisions, including widespread conference realignment.
Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Lightshed Parnters, wrote, "Could this end up being a watershed event for the linear TV business that also blows up the entire sports media ecosystem? Sure. However, we have lived through enough of these battles to know that they usually end in an agreement."
ACC EYES DALLAS AS OLYMPIC SPORTS HUB
The addition of Cal, Stanford and SMU to the Atlantic Coast Conference creates some bi-coastal travel challenges for the league, but several sources say that Dallas could become the midway point used for multiple meetings of the east and west coast members in Olympic sports.
As the No. 5 media market, the addition of a Dallas school in SMU was a major media consideration in its talks with the prospective members, even as SMU has agreed to come into the league without taking a revenue share for its first 9 years. As such, Dallas could become a neutral site hub for competitions.
"The ACC is really interested in using Dallas as a place where teams might come together to have games to minimize the impact of travel on both the eastern members and Cal and Stanford," Cal chancellor Carol Christ told the San Jose Mercury News.
In a conference call with reporters on Friday, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said that football teams would travel west every other year, while Cal and Stanford would make 3 or 4 trips east each season. In men's and women's basketball, teams would make two trips west every four years, playing both Cal and Stanford on a single west-coast swing, while Cal and Stanford would travel east 3-4 times a season, playing two games on each trip.
Louisville women's coach Jeff Walz said that beyond the addition of some strong women's program to the conference, the travel wouldn't change his program's travel dramatically. He recruits the west coast and makes frequent trips out west. The additional travel to California would either replace his program's current travel, or supplement it in off years.
KENTUCKY DERBY AMONG NON-NFL RATINGS LEADERS
With the start of the NFL regular season this week, SportsBusiness Journal took a timeout to examine the most-watched non-NFL telecasts of 2023.
The league accounted for 82 of the top 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in the U.S. in 2022, and likely will account for a similar number this year.
The top non-NFL telecasts so far in 2023? President Biden's State of the Union address with just over 25 million viewers on 14 networks led the way. It was followed by The Academy Awards in March, the College Football Playoff National Championship game in January, an episode of Next Level Chef which followed the Super Bowl on Fox, and the race segment of The Kentucky Derby, which drew 14.8 million viewers on NBC in May, just ahead of the men's NCAA championship basketball game on CBS in April.
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