Eric Church to host show for North Carolina NIL collective Heels4Life
Country music superstar Eric Church will perform on Aug. 3 at an event called “Callin’ Me Home: An Evening with Eric Church,” which will raise NIL funds for North Carolina athletes through the collective Heels4Life.
North Carolina football coach Mack Brown will be a special guest at the event, which will be held at North Carolina’s Memorial Hall, Carolina Performing Arts‘ largest venue. Brown will join Church on stage to share stories about the Tar Heels. Brown is entering his 15th season coaching North Carolina across two different stints and parts of four decades.
The event will start at 6:30 p.m. ET.
Tickets are available starting at $375 for balcony seating, where prices climb to $650. Tickets in the main rear or main front section start at $500 and $650, respectively, but they can cost up to $1,500.
Memorial Hall has a seating capacity of 1,434, which suggests a sellout crowd could potentially generate seven figures in ticket revenue, or close to it.
“Proceeds from ticket purchases will go to Heels4Life and will directly support our student-athletes,” according to the event description.
North Carolina quarterback and 2022 ACC Player of the Year Drake Maye, one of the top returning players in the country and who has more than 16,000 Twitter followers, announced the event on Twitter on Tuesday night. Maye has roughly 25 times the number of Twitter followers as Heels4Life, which provides the collective with a notable platform to use.
In the tweet, Maye tagged Church, who has 1.9 million Twitter followers, which could lead to significant publicity for the collective.
Last December, Heels4Life Executive Director Graham Boone told ESPN about the collective’s commitment to Maye, who’s entering his redshirt sophomore season.
“We stepped up to the plate to be sure UNC was the best place for him,” Boone said. “We wanted to make sure he had no interest in going anywhere else. Like Coach Brown said, he turned down a lot of money [elsewhere]. That doesn’t mean Heels4Life didn’t step up with a very, very fair amount.”
Eric Church is a longtime North Carolina fan
While Church is a graduate of Appalachian State, he’s a devoted North Carolina fan.
Church infamously canceled a show that conflicted with the 2022 Final Four, when the Tar Heels played and defeated rival Duke in a surprising run to the national championship game as a No. 8 seed.
“You know it’s funny ’cause I think he was at our last game, or one of the games he was at, and I had talked to him,” North Carolina forward Armando Bacot said at the time. “One of the coaches told me to shake his hand. But I had no clue who he was until I saw the headline. I was like, ‘Oh, OK. That’s who that dude is.’ And then a lot of my friends in Chapel Hill were telling me how famous he was. But I didn’t know because I don’t listen to country music.
“I guess that was kind of a stupid moment for me not knowing exactly who he was. But now when I see him I definitely show him some love. I’m thankful of his support.”
Now, Heels4Life – “the NIL collective of UNC football,” according to the graphic Maye shared that promotes the event – has enlisted Church’s services to help fundraise before the season.
In January, Boone described North Carolina’s support of Heels4Life in an interview with On3.
“What I can say is that our university and our boosters club, the Rams Club, have been tremendous partners in helping us identify the donors who have always been such a benefit to Carolina and helping us establish a kind of unified sense of trust with them that we’re all working on Carolina sports together and that NIL is a new form of that,” Boone said.
North Carolina opens the 2023 season against South Carolina in Charlotte on Saturday, Sept. 2.