The Penn State Football program on Friday morning announced an NIL (name, image, and likeness) partnership with popular sports merchandise retailer Fanatics and marketing group OneTeam which will include the sale of Penn State licensed jerseys featuring individual student-athlete’s names.
The announcement comes just two days after head coach James Franklin spoke to the media about a myriad of topics including Penn State’s usage or lack thereof of NIL related opportunities.
“With name, image, and likeness, this is something we’ve been pushing on and talking about for two years,” Franklin said. “In the football building this was brought up two years ago that we needed to have a plan and be aggressive and be bold with this area. I think we have an unbelievable opportunity at Penn State with our alumni base with our brand and our national reputation. I think we have a tremendous opportunity.”
He would later go onto add, “I’d love to see us being on the front end and being the leader nationally in these areas but we’re not there yet. That’s clear, that’s obvious. We have some work to do.”
For Penn State, the partnership agreement with Fanatics is a start. While there are smaller NIL agreements throughout the program including senior quarterback Sean Clifford and freshman wide receiver Liam Clifford’s, “Clifford Bros Training App”, the lack of program wide NIL deals or partnerships was glaring. That has now changed with the program’s partnership with the Philadelphia based Fanatics.
Per the announcement on Fanatics site, the partnership will “provide current college football players the opportunity to be compensated for inclusion in a broad-scale, multi-school jersey customization program.”
Players at each of the 150 universities that Fanatics and OneTeam partnered with will have the opportunity to “opt-in” to the program. Fanatics will handle the merchandise side of the partnership while OneTeam will “administer the group rights of the college athletes included in the program.” Currently, jerseys are expected to be available in time for kickoff of the 2022 season.
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