Yesterday at Big 12 Football Media Days, Commissioner Brett Yormark announced that Monster Energy would be the new “Entitlement” partner of the Big 12.

What that means is that for $20M/YR, it will be called Monster Energy Big 12 Football and Basketball and they will have a jersey patch on all football and basketball uniforms as well as a logo on all fields and courts.

As someone who has been seeking an on-uniform patch sponsorship for over a year now, I feel pretty confident about speaking on the topic.

I’ve talked to a dozen schools, all the MMR partners as well as experts in the space.

We’re going to skip over the debate whether these types of sponsorships ruin the sport etc etc and just get into the sports business piece here.

The internet is up in arms about how bad this deal is.

Well, as the title of this article says, I’m here to tell you why it’s actually a good one.

The Market is the Market

As I mentioned above, I’ve talked to a lot of people in this space and the one thing that has been driving me CRAZY is this conversation:

“Your offer is too low. We value our patch at $500,000.”

To which I respond asking if they have offers at that price?

And of the 10 times that’s happened to me, not a single one has said yes.

I can value this article at $100 but if no one will pay $100 for it, the value certainly isn’t $100.

My friend and expert in the space, Matt Brown has a jersey patch tracker.

Wyoming is getting almost $1M a year and these Big 12 schools are only getting $1.25M/yr for football AND basketball.

How is that possible???

If you go a bit deeper here with the sponsors, you’ll notice something.

These are all either donor deals where an alumni is back-dooring more NIL $ or it’s a local spot where ROI can be much clearer.

What’s different about this Monster deal is that they’re not that.

They’re the first national brand to really put a value on these sponsorships.

The Price

One of the reasons why I jumped at the opportunity last summer to do on-uniform sponsorship was because I thought I could beat the market to a good price.

Because there aren’t years of data on the market price, I figured I could find a good deal.

I want to be clear, I think that’s what Monster did here.

I think they did a bang-on job and are getting a TON of value for a fairly decent price.

But I’m going to pitch you 3 reasons why the sky isn’t falling for your favorite Big 12 team.

The Double Patch

As an expert in the space, I was well aware of the ability for school’s to also sell a 2nd on uniform patch alongside the conference patch.

Once again, we’re skipping the debate over whether making our uniforms look like NASCAR trucks is good here.

Well, that’s what happened this morning with Kansas signing on with Ripple (XRP) Crypto.

All these schools still have the opportunity to sell in their own on-uniform.

So, if you think your on-uniform or on-field is worth more, go prove it!

$1.25M is embarrassingly low…for your school

As I’ve seen from my online Texas Tech friends or BYU, they are asking if they can pay $1M to opt out of the deal!

They think they’re worth so much more than the paltry $1.25M/YR.

Tech football, Kansas basketball, Baylor hoops, ISU women’s hoops. These are all great programs that probably could or will command more than the figure they’re receiving from this Monster deal.

But this is a conference deal. Which means there’s about 50 assets (between men’s football/basketball and women’s basketball).

And if you take the average of the schools here, the $20M figure probably isn’t too far off.

Oklahoma State Football and basketball will be hard tasked to find $1M in on uniform / field sponsorship (not from a donor).

In a lot of the conversations that I’ve had, the AD’s are throwing in additional sports like women’s basketball to these deals just so they can show brands what it’ll look like.

Which brings me to part #3 of why this deal is actually good.

The Blueprint

I will once again note that $20M is a good deal for Monster and under market for the Big 12.

But welcome to running a business.

What this deal does is creates a brand new asset plus a case study for the conference.

Next year’s “Entitlement” deal will likely be bigger.

And it’s because brands will have seen all the ways they’ll show up in the deal.

The Big 12 sales team will go to market with decks filled with examples and impression #s and media value and all the goods that are needed to sell in Year 2.

We’ve seen this happen with our own business.

In Year 1 of Snapback Saturdays, we pitched an idea to brands and did around $40K in revenue before we had even done one college football weekend.

In Year 2, last season, we did around $110K because brands and schools could see what the content would look like + that we did 100M impressions in Year 1.

This year, we’re already booked in for $600K. That’s because our impressions went up to 225M, brands can perfectly visualize where they’ll show up and relationships grow.

Bonus: What if these assets lose value?

Here’s a 4th reason why I like the deal for the Big 12.

Have we considered what if the value of on-uniform drops over the next 5 years?

What if jerseys and fields looking like NASCAR trucks diminishes the value of the asset?

What if we hit a recession where advertising dollars are the first thing to go?

I know everything in sports goes up and to the right (team valuations, media deals, NIL)

But what if it doesn’t?

There’s 138 FBS D1 schools. There’s 13 D1 college football conferences. Think about how much inventory there is to sell.

If you combined ALL the core 4 pro sports, there’s only 124 teams!!

The Trailblazers are in market for their on-uniform for $1.25M/YR.

That’s a professional NBA team!

I like the Pokes, so this isn’t a shot, you guys were just randomly picked as the example here.

OK St has 176K instagram followers. Portland has 2.9M!!!

Are we sure they will be commanding the same price?

Let’s debate

If you can’t tell, I love sports business. I could debate and talk this stuff all day long.

I’m also open to being very wrong here.

I just have this POV as someone who has navigated this over the last 365 days from the side of the advertiser.

An update on our jersey patch sponsorship could be coming very soon.

We chatted with a school that’s motivated to get a deal done and we’ll be making our official offer tomorrow morning.

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