Clemson Ventures a Sign of Things to Come in Collegiate Sports

Although one organization’s move does not signal a trend, the stars are aligning within college sports to reasonably expect other universities to follow down the path that Clemson University is forging with the creation of a separately run affiliate to drive revenue for its athletics programs.

With the dizzying pace of change impacting every NCAA school, it is no secret that athletic departments are exploring all manner of new ways to adapt, including hiring personnel with diverse skillsets, incorporating new technologies to harness the revenue potential from content and other IP, and partnering with third-party services in key areas such as NIL, ticketing and hospitality.

The formation of Clemson Ventures reflects a too often unacknowledged fact: Operating within an academic environment makes it tremendously difficult, if not impossible, to move swiftly and with flexibility to accommodate change and deliver results.

While no one currently working for or with a university wants to publicly acknowledge that reality, Jonathan Gantt, former Clemson associate AD/creative solutions and consultant to Clemson Ventures, came close in remarks to Sports Business Journal about the new unit.

“Athletics administrators are really great triage operators—every day any number of issues that are flying at them from every direction, they work to solve them and then they move to the next one. But there comes a point when managing through that non-stop triage isn’t making you meaningful progress. You have to…step out, create a voice, assess what’s going on, what’s coming and build for the future, which is what this is about.”

It will not be long until the next school “steps out,” although how it and others do so will look much different that the Clemson Ventures model, which the university describes as “designed with a true private-sector business structure and full-service marketing and NIL agency capabilities to drive revenue.”

That’s because Clemson is one of only three Power Four programs that manage their marketing and media rights in house. Clemson Ventures expands and restructures the current Clemson Athletic Properties unit to include additional responsibilities for NIL, content creation and distribution and other business operations under a to-be-hired CEO.

Other schools looking to further decouple athletics revenue generation from university administration would have to work in concert with their multimedia rights representative or be willing to cut ties with firms such as Learfield, Playfly, JMI or Legends if they wanted to fully emulate the Clemson structure.

However college athletics programs look to establish more commercial business entities, it will only be good news for partners and sponsors that can benefit from new capabilities and streamlined processes operating outside of academic bureaucracies and away from turf wars, politics and other circumstances that can bog down and distract school administrators and staff members.