The collegiate licensing business is about to undergo some profound changes, thanks to two recently announced deals involving major players in the collegiate market.
Last week, Fanatics said it had purchased the collegiate licensing operations of Fermata Partners, an agency founded in 2012 and owned by CAA since 2015. Fermata execs Derek Eiler and Chris Prindiville will head up Fanatics College, the company’s new licensing division formed through the acquisition, from their home base in Atlanta.
Fermata’s collegiate clients include the universities of Georgia, Kentucky, Miami, Notre Dame, Oregon, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Its non-collegiate clients, including PGA Tour, about a dozen English Premier League football/soccer clubs, and the Kentucky Derby, remain with CAA Sports.
The purchase of Fermata adds one more element to Fanatics’ wide reach in collegiate and sports licensing, with the new licensing division joining other services including e-commerce, bricks-and-mortar store management, signed collectibles, and manufacturing.
Fanatics’ acquisition of Fermata follows close on the heels of another potentially significant change in the collegiate licensing business. In early October, Learfield Communications and IMG College announced they had reached a definitive agreement to merge. IMG and Atairos, which purchased Learfield in 2016, will jointly own the combined company.
The merger will likely face regulatory scrutiny because of the near-monopoly it would create. Not only do the two companies together oversee multimedia rights for about 85% of major-conference universities, but their licensing divisions handle merchandising for more than 800 schools and conferences (620 for Learfield Licensing Partners and close to 200 for IMG College). IMG College historically has been thought to represent about half of collegiate retail sales; Learfield’s clients include smaller institutions as well as big names.
This is not the first period of upheaval for the collegiate licensing agency business. IMG College was created from IMG Sports’ acquisition of the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) in 2007; William Morris Endeavour purchased IMG in 2013. Learfield’s licensing business, meanwhile, was formed in 2014 after Learfield acquired the Licensing Resource Group and Strategic Marketing Resources, the two major competitors to CLC at the time.
One boutique collegiate licensing agency left standing is Exemplar Associates, which represents Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. A number of colleges and universities also oversee their licensing activities in-house rather than through an agency.
It will be interesting to see how Fanatics’ entry into collegiate licensing management, along with the huge scope of the combined Learfield/IMG collegiate licensing business when that deal goes through, will impact the collegiate merchandise landscape as a whole going forward.
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