Fanstake - Duke Grad creates a company to help support your favorite athlete via NIL.

nmduke2001

nmduke2001

Member
A buddy of mine from Duke has created a company to help fans support NIL deals for their favorite college players. It's called Fanstake. Here is some information from their linkedin site.

"Could Harvard recruit Arch Manning?

It sounds like an insane idea, but soon it might not be.

Today, college sports recruiting happens behind closed doors. Donors, athletic departments, and NIL collectives all funnel big dollars to recruits. Meanwhile, the most important stakeholders — the fans — have no role.

Fanstake is changing that by building the first open and competitive fan-driven NIL platform.

Here's how it works: Fans can "stake" financial support for players they want to recruit or transfer to their favorite teams. If a fan's "staked" athlete chooses the school, Fanstake gives those NIL dollars to the player. If not, the fan gets their money back to support other athletes.

College sports fans will be empowered to support their favorite schools more directly than ever before. So if Harvard fans want to band together to recruit Archie Manning away from Texas, well it might not be impossible."

It's an intriguing strategy.
 
Once you give them your email address you can browse different schools and athletes. While I don't love the idea of injecting even more money into paying players, this feels like an idea that will catch on with a lot of folks. "UM fans, help us steal OSU's top recruit for next year. You have 5 days to contribute and screw the Buckeyes...."
 
bluedevilwildcats said:
Once you give them your email address you can browse different schools and athletes. While I don't love the idea of injecting even more money into paying players, this feels like an idea that will catch on with a lot of folks. "UM fans, help us steal OSU's top recruit for next year. You have 5 days to contribute and screw the Buckeyes...."
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Short term maybe...but I don't see this as long lasting....
My check is still in the mail.....
 
N=Name I=Image L=Likeness.
Is the athlete going to send the donor a photo or poster? Maybe an NFT? or is this a cash only transaction?
 
Fanstake seems to be using fan passion to crack open the NIL space. Interesting concept. One thing will be to see if it empowers fans, or if it’s just another path out of money for recruiting wars.
 
A friend of mine married into a Kentucky booster family. He has a picture of his baby with Patrick Patterson. Once when he was up there visiting, his in-laws stopped by the ATM to make a withdrawal for Patterson. That seems so quaint now.

I am all for players cashing in on the actual marketability of their NIL, but, as HereBeforeCoachK noted, that is just lip service, except for a few, like Cooper Flag and Livvy Dunne. I'm actually surprised I haven't seen more actual corporate marketing of college athletes. It's just constant, unrestrained, straight-up free agency. Post-game handshake lines likely includes sales pitches.

While I don't think Duke will compete on pure payment with the SEC, I do think Duke still has a gap ahead of every other program in actual marketability value. Oh, and there's that great education and the Brotherhood connections, too.
 
Interesting idea, but seems like it appeals more to fans with small amounts of money to donate. High-dollar donors likely already have ways to make their money count. I have no way of knowing if this is actually true, just a gut instinct.
 
UrinalCake said:
Interesting idea, but seems like it appeals more to fans with small amounts of money to donate. High-dollar donors likely already have ways to make their money count. I have no way of knowing if this is actually true, just a gut instinct.
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I think you're mostly correct. If I were running their revenue function, first thing I'd do is create partnerships with universities and get alum contact info and then run separate email and direct mail campaigns for each school. Very low acquisition cost, schools would be happy to partner up. That probably gets them 2-3 years of runway of low-risk, high-margin growth. Down the road I'd run targeted digital and offline marketing campaigns to attract alums like us, by then they'll have figured out a business model that supports higher customer acquisition costs.

This could be big, at least until Congress steps in to rein in the madness.
 
UrinalCake said:
Interesting idea, but seems like it appeals more to fans with small amounts of money to donate. High-dollar donors likely already have ways to make their money count. I have no way of knowing if this is actually true, just a gut instinct.
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Yeah, I don't see this ever generating enough concentration with small dollar donors. It's one of those ideas that sounds really interesting but in practice never gets to critical mass.
 
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