Why content is king for collectives thanks to Sport & Story
As donor fatigue deepens nationwide, one question increasingly weighs on NIL stakeholders’ minds: How should school fundraising foundations reward donors with something of value so they can continue to expand their pool of contributors and drive revenue?
Enter a company called Sport & Story.
Billed as a leading provider of creative storytelling in college sports, S&S over the last two years has provided a treasure trove of premier content to members of their subscription platforms that work with fundraising foundations. The platforms reward existing foundation donors, attract new ones and aim to increase both revenue and membership numbers.
Now Sport & Story is expanding its portfolio with other clients that have also felt the brunt of donor fatigue: NIL collectives.
“I think the model works even better on the collective side,” Victor Vitarelli, Sport & Story COO and head of content told On3.
Working with foundations has been successful. Sport & Story has five platforms in the space – LSU, Arkansas, Mississippi State, South Carolina and Oklahoma State. Three of those platforms, Arkansas, Oklahoma State and South Carolina, currently working with their respective fundraising foundations. At Oklahoma State, for instance, $8.99 per month or $98.89 annually, will give you access to behind-the-scenes content, interviews, features, documentaries and archived games, as well as complimentary membership to the Oklahoma State POSSE, the athletic department’s fundraising arm.
Sport & Story implements content model for collectives
Now Sport & Story will implement a similar model for collectives at a consequential moment in the young NIL era. An increasing number of new or amended state NIL laws – including in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and New York – are greasing the skids for schools to bring collectives more under the umbrella of school fundraising foundations.
Some aspects of a closer relationship, including awarding collective donors with priority points, stand in conflict with NCAA rules. But many industry leaders believe a tighter relationship between a school’s fundraising foundation and collective is the future. That would be an NIL world in which inefficiencies and inherent pain points are reduced.
So, as the contours of the space evolve, Sport & Story is utilizing a two-pronged strategy: S&S is looking to work exclusively with school-affiliated collectives, independent of the university’s fundraising arm. It also seeks to work with both a school’s collective and its fundraising foundation, where state laws allow.
The company’s initial announcements this summer expect to involve primarily collectives only, independent of the fundraising arm. Sport & Story is currently engaged in discussions largely with consortiums of collectives. S&S will also continue to pursue partnerships with school fundraising foundations, independent of collectives.
A structure that brings the collective more under the umbrella of the fundraising arm is a “better model,” Vitarelli said, adding the “sooner we can get there [as an industry], the better the whole space is going to be.”
That new so-called progressive model, which is being employed at Texas A&M and Texas Tech, specifically aims to alleviate donor fatigue, an issue S&S believes it also addresses.
“When they [collectives] launched, they got their heavy-hitter checks, they got their deep-pocket checks,” Vitarelli said. “That’s not going to be there forever. So, they have to figure out how to do this on a grassroots level. Now, they have to figure out how to actually build and maintain essentially a business. And so they need to offer something in exchange for those funds coming in.”
Unearthing new fans for the NIL space
If S&S’s results with foundations are any indication, offering content to collective donors would unlock the same benefits. The biggest upside: unearthing new fans.
The old-school mix of membership benefits may have included a bumper sticker or parking pass — perks largely event-based – because the focus was on a few hundred-mile radius around the campus. But with the content platform offering, that radius expands nationally.
If you become a member of the foundation, you also receive access to the content platform. And if you become a member of the content platform, you automatically receive membership into the foundation. Over the past 10 months at South Carolina, Gamecocks+ has seen the biggest-ever year of non-ticket-related membership increase in the history of Gamecocks Club, the school’s fundraising foundation.
Additionally, one of Sport & Story’s SEC partners – Vitarelli declined to name it – indicated 90% of fans who signed up for the content platform were not already foundation members. As a result, all of the data related to those donors was also new to the university. That’s a significant benefit that unlocks more personalized messaging campaigns.
Fans signing up for the content platform are typically younger than traditional foundation or collective donors. That enables either a foundation or collective to start the fan relationship earlier. Those donors, the hope is, will grow from smaller-dollar donors to deep-pocket donors over time.
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Come here and ‘you’re going to be highlighted’
Sport & Story’s content has been seen on ESPN, HBO, the SEC Network, CBS, College GameDay and more. It offers content both in front of the paywall and behind the paywall. It places staff, typically four people, on the ground on campuses to work directly with the existing creative teams.
S&S produces nearly 700 original pieces of content on each individual platform annually. That includes distinguished, award-winning content such as The Follow on Arkansas’ Hogs+, a behind-the-scenes window into athletic programs; and Growing Season on Oklahoma State’s OSU Max, an all-access deep dive into the men’s basketball program. There’s also a focus on sports that don’t typically attract a bright spotlight, such as the equestrian team at Oklahoma State.
“When you think about where a lot of these athletic department creative staffs are really post-COVID, they’re cut down,” Vitarelli said. “And they’re focusing on social media, which I get. You get a lot of bang for your buck with social media. But the idea of long-form storytelling is a challenge in these environments. So, we bring in these incremental resources, and you can now touch stories outside of football and men’s basketball.”
For one of S&S’s SEC partners, an aspect of the normal on-campus recruiting visit now entails staff sitting the prospect down in front of a television and walking them through the content platform. The school is using it, Vitarelli said, to say, “‘Hey, come here and you’re going to have a story told about you or your team. You’re going to be highlighted. This is going to help you ultimately build your brand and build your NIL value.'”
Sport & Story content addresses donor confusion
Premium content also addresses another pain point: increasing donor confusion.
With the space evolving so fast, Vitarelli doesn’t believe the average fan understands what it means to contribute, say, $100 to the school’s collective. But through content, you can control the message better and market the collective more effectively.
“You can really help the fan connect and understand, ‘Ok, here’s where that $100 is going. It is going to help this student-athlete who, ‘Oh, by the way, you have just seen their story, so you understand who they are off the field,'” Vitarelli said. “It builds a much tighter connection and bond between what the collective is asking of the fan and what the fans are able to do.”
If a fan contributes $20 per month, a few dollars will go toward paying for the content piece of the membership. The rest goes to the student-athletes. If a donor contributes more per month, that just means that a larger slice of that contribution is channeled to the student-athletes. (In partnerships with Sport & Story, schools and collectives pay nothing.)
Vitarelli said their estimated lifetime of subscribers is significantly longer than the subscription lifespan of those who sign up for Netflix or Disney+.
“There’s an understanding within college sports that the athletic departments that figure out how to win in the NIL space are going to be the ones that ultimately win on the field,” Vitarelli said. “There’s a lot of interest in trying to solve that equation: How do we build this collective? And how do we bring value to our fans through the collective?”
Collectives are ‘not going anywhere’
Collectives are increasingly operated as businesses. When they first began to proliferate nationwide, there was no model positioned as a blueprint. As Vitarelli said, “There was no plan for the future. It was, ‘Let’s get a bunch of checks, and then we’ll figure out how to distribute that to the student-athletes.’
“Now there’s much more clarity around, ‘How do we operate this for the long term?'” It is not going anywhere. I think this space will evolve very quickly along these lines.”