Issue 5

Opening Take

This week officially kicks off the 2026 college football season. When Penn State takes the field in their season opener against Marshall, the game will be the first big event for Penn State Rewards. As I mentioned last issue, Penn State Rewards is a loyalty program where fans earn points for attending games, spending at partner locations like Dunkin' and Jersey Mike's, or at Penn State athletic facilities. The technology is powered by Uptop - a card linked rewards platform, and marketing of the program is a partnership between Penn State Sports Enterprises and Playfly.

The other big rollout happening there is the Penn State Nittany Lions Fan Token - a digital utility token that gives fans access to engagement features like official polls, rewards and exclusive Penn State fan experiences. Penn State is one of five major college athletic programs partnered with Socios.com in building a Fan Token (others are Texas A&M, Michigan State, Maryland and LSU).

What I'm Watching

• SIDEARM Sports - which powers the websites and mobile apps for over 1,500 college athletics programs - is integrating LivXp's experiential auction platform directly into its fan engagement tools. This means schools already on the Sidearm Sports platform can offer fans the ability to bid on gameday experiences and memorabilia without building anything new. Another example of schools looking to drive deeper fan engagement and new revenue sources.
• Carlie Irsay-Gordon is making moves before she's even fully in charge. SBJ's cover story this week profiles the Colts heir apparent as someone willing to challenge the NFL - on ownership culture, what teams owe their communities and how the league talks about itself. Great read on what it signals about the next generation of sports ownership.
• The news these days about LSU and Lane Kiffin centers around LSU signing NFL players to return to college. What you may have missed is the story about five block trades placed on Kalshi on LSU making a run to the national championship. The total combined payout of the bets - $3 million - equals the payout LSU would owe Kiffin for a national championship season. Are the Kalshi bets - made by Game Point Capital, a sports insurance firm that insures sports team paying out bonuses - a hedge against potential bonus payments to its always controversial football coach?

Insight of the Week

Two. That's the number of fan engagement platforms Penn State launched in the same month. Most programs haven't launched one.

Athletic departments have been collecting fan behavioral data for years - attendance, ticket sales, total revenue. But until now, that data didn't tell the real story - who shows up, how often, what they spend, where they sit. For most programs, this data lives in disconnected systems and gets used reactively, if at all. What Penn State is doing is treating fan behavior as data with real revenue value. Points, tokens. That's not loyalty marketing. That's fan data infrastructure.

Fan loyalty is becoming an asset class. Athletic departments that figure out how to build systems to leverage that data will have something sponsors, media partners and eventually private equity will want to underwrite. The old way of just selling sponsorships can't sustain new college sports business model.

Looking Ahead

• ​SBJ Drive Conference, Indianapolis (Sep 22-24)
• ​SBJ Game Changers Conference 2026, New York (Sep 30-Oct 1) - Celebrating & Elevating Women in Sports
• ​Wharton Sports Business Summit, Philadelphia (Oct 16)

If you're attending any of these, reply and let me know. I'd love to connect.

Before you go...

Season 2 of the Beyond The Whistle podcast drops soon. If there's a topic from this newsletter issue you want me to dig into on an episode, hit reply and tell me - I read every one.

And if you haven't yet, follow the podcast now so Season 2 lands in your feed the moment it's live: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube​

Odell