Pitt NIL Collective Alliance 412 Launches Oakland Originals
PITTSBURGH -- The application of name, image and likeness rights in college athletics by athletes continues to evolve and expand and the Pitt Panthers are trying to keep up. To do so, the NIL collective Alliance 412 - which has signed deals with Pitt football and basketball stars like Calijah Kancey, Blake Hinson, Marquis Williams, Nelly Cummings and others - will add a new division to help facilitate NIL deals for Panther athletes.
This week, Alliance 412 revealed the addition of Oakland Originals, a marketing arm of what collective officials referred to as "the preferred NIL collective of the University of Pittsburgh." Oakland Originals is a collaboration between Jaster Athletes, a sports marketing company based out of Pittsburgh that works with local high school, college and professional athletes, and Alliance 412 that aims to help Pitt athletes build their brands and foster better NIL opportunities.
Jaster Athletes CEO Rooney collaborated with Chris Bickell, a Pitt megadonor who made a $20 million donation to the football program in September 2021 and the CEO of Well Hive, an information technology firm that helps connect veterans with healthcare services, on ways to improve Alliance 412 and Oakland Originals was their solution.
Oakland Originals will work with Alliance 412 and the athletes signed with the collective with the aim of promoting Pitt athletes, their personalities and larger brands to make them bigger fixtures in the city of Pittsburgh and the surrounding region, and in turn make them more attractive to the businesses, charitable organizations and individuals who might want to give them their money.
“Think of it as a marketing agency for Alliance [412] and all things NIL, but it’s also going to be a marketing agency for Pitt’s athletes," Rooney said. "All Pitt athletes who partner with us will be able to get content created, brand coaching, graphic design, financial literacy - whatever it is. … Alliance is providing the service to build their brands.”
Oakland Originals could, for example, help a Pitt athlete create their own clothing brand or start a podcast. The brand will also create original content that features the athletes and create merchandise that features the likeness of former Pitt greats.
But Oakland Originals is just an arm of Alliance 412, which will pay the athletes for their work promoting the collective. The vision that Rooney, Alliance 412 Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer, John Pelusi and collective COO Jeff Goldberg have is of a symbiotic relationship between the collective and athletes.
The day before announcing the launch of Oakland Originals, Alliance 412 also announced a new membership program, which will allow Pitt fans to contribute directly to the collective. Subscriptions range from $10 to $500 per month, with tiers of benefits corresponding to the contribution. Those benefits include meetups with athletes, signed merchandise and more.
"This is Oakland Orginials and Alliance 412 creating a platform which ... invests in athletes," Rooney said. "It can help the athletes make money long-term and it also is a revenue generator for the collective."
Goldberg said that "a lot" of the money spent by Alliance 412 has come from Bickell, but the membership model is one of the ways the collective hopes to grow the donor base and increase fan engagement.
He declined to disclose how much money is in the collective, how many have donated to the collective, what kind of growth in revenue Alliance 412 is targeting, and player participation rates, but did add that how much is considered necessary for a healthy NIL collective has grown wildly since it's inception two years ago.
"You would be flabbergasted by the numbers I hear today vs. the numbers I heard six months ago in terms of necessities," Goldberg said. "It's mind-boggling and I say that not to get on my hands and knees and beg for money. But this landscape has dramatically shifted even since January."
How this new initiative will impact Alliance 412 and Pitt's place in the NIL landscape are unclear and the impact in both recruiting and on-field performance won't be known until months and years down the road.
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