Gold Helmets and Leprechauns: Notre Dame Teams Up With Fanatics

(Bloomberg) -- Fanatics Inc. has signed a 10-year licensing deal with the University of Notre Dame, making it the official gatekeeper for products bearing the school’s logo, its leprechaun mascot or its signature golden helmets.

Starting next year, Fanatics will become the school’s primary apparel, headwear and hard-goods partner, a step forward in its recent push into college sports. Fanatics will make a lot of those products itself and will sublicense others through the school’s existing partners, including jersey provider Under Armour Inc.

The world’s largest seller of licensed sports apparel, Fanatics is also promising to use its sales database -- a map of where Fighting Irish fans live and what they like -- to help the school well beyond licensed goods. It will do that alongside Salesforce.com Inc., a software partner of both parties.

“Whether that’s in ticket sales, or charitable giving or a trip to back to campus, we think that by taking the Fanatics expertise and mutually leveraging the Salesforce platform, we can make Notre Dame fans experience and engage with the school more than they do today,” said Fanatics Executive Vice President Derek Eiler.

Valuable Brand

Notre Dame is one of the most valuable brands in college sports, thanks to an avid alumni base, a strong following among Catholics and a storied football team, which has 11 national titles and an NBC broadcast deal all its own. The Indiana school is consistently one of the top-selling college teams across the Fanatics network.

That popularity also means that there are plenty of Fighting Irish fans who aren’t alumni, and don’t make it to games. Notre Dame wants to be smarter in interacting with the fans it knows, and also wants to gain info on the ones it doesn’t.

“We may not know all the people out there cheering for Notre Dame from afar, without a formal relationship with the institution,” said Micki Kidder, Notre Dame’s vice president for enterprises and events. “I want to tell them, ‘We’re grateful for you, so come on this journey with us.’”

Also, no matter how strong the fan base, apparel sales can ebb and flow depending on how well the school’s sports teams are playing. And managing a licensee program with around 200 partners (small by college-sports standards) isn’t easy.

The Pitch

Fanatics makes this pitch to schools: In exchange for giving us the keys to your licensing program, we’ll give you a signing bonus and an annual royalty guarantee. We’ll also expand the number of products available to your fans, give you insight about who’s buying your gear, and be more nimble if something happens on the field that can be turned into a commercial opportunity.

Both sides declined to comment on specific deal terms, but Fanatics’ pact with Oregon, similar in structure, was $1.5 million upfront and a further $21.5 million guaranteed over 10 years.

Fanatics, which expects $3.2 billion in sales this year, is hoping it can do for college sports what it has done across most of U.S. pro sports, where it is the dominant force for almost any product bearing a team logo. Fanatics operates the online shops for the NHL, NBA, NFL and MLB, plus many of their teams, and has major licensing agreements with all four leagues.

Notre Dame is the company’s fourth major college deal of this sort, following tie-ups with Oregon, Florida and Miami. Fanatics is also prioritizing international growth, another area where Notre Dame can be a valuable partner.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eben Novy-Williams in New York at enovywilliam@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards III

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