MARKETING AND SPONSORSHIP
PLAYFLY SPORTS
Penn State has a new multimedia rights partner after months of discussion, as the school and Playfly Sports have agreed to a 15-year deal, SBJ has learned. An announcement could come as soon as today. The agreement will center on driving commercial growth for the athletic department through fan engagement, content creation and premium game day programming, among other facets.
“We sort of dove in with both feet to try to structure a relationship that wasn't just around multimedia rights,” Playfly Founder & CEO Michael Schreiber said. “Especially with [AD Pat Kraft’s] vision for the future of Penn State athletics, we saw tons of opportunities to add even more services as we built out the Playfly sports company.”
As Schreiber alluded, the deal initially started with discussions of multimedia rights, but expanded well beyond that as Playfly representatives worked with Kraft to come to an agreement. The content creation piece is a new part of what Playfly has worked to roll into previous deals with a handful of its existing partners. As it relates to Penn State, the company will help create a podcast network, establish membership-based services for fans and activate around Penn State's football gameday experiences.
“We now have all these additional services that we can provide to partners that we sort of rolled into a lot of our existing partners -- like an LSU or a Michigan State,” Schreiber said. “But we actually get to do a deal here where we can put all those services into an enterprise-wide solution for Penn State. And that's what we're launching here, really a new type of commercial arrangement with the university.”
As part of the deal, Schreiber estimated there will be 15-20 Playfly employees working on campus under the Penn State athletic department’s banner. Playfly will also work with Penn State’s Happy Valley United Collective in regard to NIL opportunities that may arise out of this arrangement.
“[The collective] has connectivity to the fan base and the donors to drive some new strategies and monetization for them as well,” Schrieber said. “That is going to help drive some NIL benefit, but we're big, big fans of being able to tap into a whole new workforce that we didn't have access to two years ago.”
Penn State previously worked with Learfield regarding its multimedia rights prior to jumping on with Playfly.
Penn State, Playfly agree to 15-year multimedia rights deal
BY BEN PORTNOY1.11.2024PLAYFLY SPORTS
Penn State has a new multimedia rights partner after months of discussion, as the school and Playfly Sports have agreed to a 15-year deal, SBJ has learned. An announcement could come as soon as today. The agreement will center on driving commercial growth for the athletic department through fan engagement, content creation and premium game day programming, among other facets.
“We sort of dove in with both feet to try to structure a relationship that wasn't just around multimedia rights,” Playfly Founder & CEO Michael Schreiber said. “Especially with [AD Pat Kraft’s] vision for the future of Penn State athletics, we saw tons of opportunities to add even more services as we built out the Playfly sports company.”
As Schreiber alluded, the deal initially started with discussions of multimedia rights, but expanded well beyond that as Playfly representatives worked with Kraft to come to an agreement. The content creation piece is a new part of what Playfly has worked to roll into previous deals with a handful of its existing partners. As it relates to Penn State, the company will help create a podcast network, establish membership-based services for fans and activate around Penn State's football gameday experiences.
“We now have all these additional services that we can provide to partners that we sort of rolled into a lot of our existing partners -- like an LSU or a Michigan State,” Schreiber said. “But we actually get to do a deal here where we can put all those services into an enterprise-wide solution for Penn State. And that's what we're launching here, really a new type of commercial arrangement with the university.”
As part of the deal, Schreiber estimated there will be 15-20 Playfly employees working on campus under the Penn State athletic department’s banner. Playfly will also work with Penn State’s Happy Valley United Collective in regard to NIL opportunities that may arise out of this arrangement.
“[The collective] has connectivity to the fan base and the donors to drive some new strategies and monetization for them as well,” Schrieber said. “That is going to help drive some NIL benefit, but we're big, big fans of being able to tap into a whole new workforce that we didn't have access to two years ago.”
Penn State previously worked with Learfield regarding its multimedia rights prior to jumping on with Playfly.
