FANSTAKE FOR ATHLETIC DEPTS.

Fanstake is a college fan engagement platform and marketplace. Our core products include:

• Fan “stakes,” which are free-market fan/brand contributions to NIL deals.
• College sports games, where fans can “play for their team,” earning rewards for themselves and NIL deals for their school’s athletes. 

We make money by connecting brands directly to these highly engaged college audiences, not by the contributions to the athletes.Brands strike NIL deals because they want engaged consumers. Our model is to bring clear ROI to NIL - something we believe that too few in the industry consider.

The success of our platform is heavily influenced by NIL - that is, athletes are our best channel to promote Fanstake to their fans. 

The landscape of college athletics allows for a win-win in this scenario. 

• Fans/Boosters can crowdfund to support their team. 
• Athletes can get FMV offers
• Schools can tap into their fanbases more effectively.  
• Fanstake gets the marketing tailwinds from this cycle. 

Fanstake brings engaged fans and athletes together in one spot - bringing even more valuable NIL opportunities to them over time.

Fanstake was founded by serial technology entrepreneurs, Greg Glass (LinkedIn), Donnie Flood (Guild) and Alex Boisvert (Headspace), all who previously started and built technology companies, including a 2014 Ad technology platform (Bizo) that was acquired by LinkedIn for $175M. Fanstake has recently raised $9.25M from multiple sports oriented investors including Courtside Ventures (The Athletic, Fliff), Will Ventures (TMRW Sports, The Snow League), Susa Ventures (Robinhood, Loop), Alumni Ventures, with direct investments from senior leadership at Headspace, LinkedIn, Google and others.

Yes. This is one of the big structural changes triggered by the federal injunction and subsequent settlement in the Tennessee/Virginia vs. NCAA case in 2024. Athletes are now allowed to negotiate NIL deals in advance of selecting a school. This, at its core, is the basis of the Fanstake platform - it’s a pre-negotiation marketplace. The biggest difference is that Fanstake does this publicly in most cases - as supply, demand and competition are the single most important factors for determining fair market value of an athlete’s NIL.

Absolutely. Fanstake was meticulously designed in collaboration with multiple legal firms (WSGR, Duane Morris, DWT, Kennyherz Perry, Priola Law, Maquette Advisors), industry legal experts (Mit Winter, KHP), and top sports capital firms (Courtside, Will Ventures, Susa Ventures, Scrum Ventures, Alumni Ventures) to ensure that the platform would be fully compliant with the House Settlement guidance and new CSC/NCAA bylaws. 

Fanstake is an independent, for-profit and transparent NIL marketplace, with the goal of ensuring all schools can compete for talent in a democratized system, while athletes have the ability to earn fair market value with free and fair competition.  

Every single Fanstake deal has cleared through the CSC’s NIL GO platform from both small (G5) and large (P4) schools alike, and is firmly established as a private, non-associated company not subject to additional “associated” deal oversight.

To be explicitly clear - it is illegal for the NIL Go Clearinghouse to stop a Fanstake deal, as it would be in direct contradiction to the House Settlement terms and new bylaws, in addition to being counter to most state laws and a Federal antitrust violation.

This is an important distinction of Fanstake’s open network model, and a subtle nuance of the House settlement. Third-Party restrictions are tied exclusively to entities that work “solely” with a particular university (i.e. Collectives). Fanstake’s business model, by definition, requires we do the opposite. We are agnostic to the university and have contributions from hundreds of schools for thousands of athletes.  

We do not share information about one program to another, nor do we have any bias towards one program or another. This independence is necessary for free market dynamics and true, unsuppressed FMV.

Since Fanstake is an independent and unassociated for-profit business, all NIL deals that we do with athletes are not subject to the revenue share cap or NIL Go clearinghouse FMV oversight.    

In practice what this means is that contributions through Fanstake are typically negotiated as part of the overall NIL/Rev Share package that athletes get - allowing for maximum flexibility on distribution across athletic programs. 

Examples: 

1. Fanstake activates a percentage of allocation across revenue-generating sports. This “off-cap” percentage effectively acts as additional salary cap space for direct revenue sharing. 
2. Fanstake serves as the primary NIL channel for “second-tier” sports (Baseball, Softball, Hockey, etc.), allowing direct Rev Share dollars to go entirely to Football/Basketball.  

Fanstake works directly with athletes or athlete representation, independent of the University:

• Pre-negotiated, guaranteed, contracted payments between Fanstake and the athlete. 
• Payments aligned with the negotiated activation timeline. We can pay faster than rev share: 
  
  • Immediate 
  • Pre-season
  • In-season
  • Successive seasons
• All deals are submitted to NIL Go and fully compliant. Athletes are 1099 contractors, all tax materials provided. 

Deliverables will be tied to endorsing Fanstake and/or Brands that participate in the Stake, and are commensurate with the market value of the deal and athlete profile. Any deals under $20,000 are typically limited to:

• Less than 3 social media posts.
• Signed Memorabilia/Collectibles 

Activation on deals $20,000+ scale with size (photo shoots, branded clothing, etc.), but Fanstake always endeavors to limit distracting athlete deliverables and can be negotiated and coordinated with NIL departments/Collectives.  

Fanstake retains non-exclusive NIL marketing rights of the athlete for one year upon the athlete signing, where we can then source additional NIL brand opportunities for student-athletes from third parties (always subject to approval).

Fanstake’s core business is connecting third party brands to consumers (fans). The unspoken reality of NIL is that most brands are not seeing ROI on their athlete deals, while the largest marketing budgets are always reserved for the campaigns that are data driven and ROI positive. 

Brands have the ability to strike deals with athletes from many different channels. Fanstake’s competitive advantage is that our NIL deals bring engaged and incentivized fans with them, where the fans are actually rewarded for supporting the brands that support their teams. 

Because of our open-market approach, Fanstake can work with brands across schools, state-lines, and sports, to bring our businesses engaged consumers - what they are actually paying for. 

For example, our brand deals might look like “30 athletes across Texas, or 500 women’s soccer players nationally reaching 1,000,000 engaged fans with X Fanstake incentives for their teams.” 

At the end of the day, our goal is to bring your athletes the most valuable opportunities, your fans the best experience, and our brands the clearest ROI. If a brand wants to work with one of your athletes via a Fanstake campaign, we will notify them of the opportunity and they can choose to accept or reject the offer.

By default, 95% of funds go directly to the student-athletes, with Fanstake withholding 5% to cover operational overhead. If there are additional required third-party payment processing fees those are included as well. 

Fanstake also further reduces fees for held contributions based on volume and if deals are contingent on future commitments. This model is designed to offset the impact of what would otherwise be earning interest.

No. This is another important distinction of our unique position in the marketplace as an independent and unassociated for-profit business. Many of Fanstake’s contributors choose to remain anonymous, and we will always support that platform function. 

To explain in more detail - technically, Fanstake doesn’t have any donors - we have customers. We are paid directly by customers for our ability to procure and activate brand deals with athletes they want to support. The way to understand this is that our customers are paying Fanstake for a service - full stop. If we’re unable to deliver that service we refund our customers. 

The benefit of this is that fan demand directs us (or other 3rd party brands) towards the athletes they want to support, hugely valuable for our business and other brands to determine the true demand and FMV of an athlete in a given locale. 

• If Athlete #1 is valued at $100K in Knoxville and $150K in Lexington - that demand information (fan amount and $ amount) is an important data point in determining brand value. 
• Fanstake now has the open-market value, the athlete’s NIL, and the respective fans all in one place to work with brands to activate future deals.  This drives our core revenue model. 

We default to transparency on our platform, and fan contributions are all on public display - but larger boosters have no legal obligation to disclose their payment to us (private party-to-private party), and can request for it to be private.

No. Any contribution over $10,000 will be contracted directly with Fanstake off-platform. The contributor can choose whether to display it publicly (either anonymously or branded).

Timing is entirely at the discretion of the athletic department, and Fanstake negotiates deals with the athlete and/or athlete’s representation. Fanstake can activate deals immediately, plan around a future date, or - the standard - set the deal as “contingent” upon a student-athlete being rostered the subsequent season.

We enter into a direct legal contract (Beyond T&Cs) with every contributor over $10,000, and the contribution is contingent on our ability to contract the NIL deal with the respective athlete on the given terms. NIL funds are held separately from our operating account, and are only used for NIL deals. If a deal doesn’t convert the full amount is refunded to the contributor’s original source of payment (or they can choose to Stake another athlete by request). 

*Note that if a campaign is to be immediately activated (in-season or pre-season), the NIL deal is not considered contingent on attendance, and contributors don’t get the “future Stake” protections. 

As a for-profit company (one of the attributes necessary for NIL Go approval), contributions made on Fanstake are not eligible for standard 501(c)(3) deductions. However, if a donor chooses to contribute branded under their LLC/Corporation, the contribution is 100% tax-deductible as an advertising expense, as Fanstake markets the contribution and promotes it to a highly targeted fan-base (including on-site, in email, and in-feed).

Getting started is simple.  For smaller contributions (under $5K), contributors can choose to put funds directly on the platform at www.fanstake.com either for individual athletes or for a program. For larger contributions where the specifics of the deal require coordination, it’s best to start with a simple intake form, and our team will coordinate a call to discuss the specific details.  

Once deal terms are established, Fanstake will issue a contract with all the necessary legal and financial protections to the contributing party along with ACH/Wire information. 

When the contract is signed and funded, Fanstake will take care of the rest.  We contract directly with the athlete/agents, track deliverables over the season, submit compliance paperwork, share tax documentation with the athlete, and schedule payments aligned with the contract terms.  

Should a student-athlete reject the deal or lose eligibility, the contributed amount will be refunded in-full to the contributing party to their original source of payment. 

Each Fanstake deal is for a single annual term, and are not guarantees of commitment to a program. Payment terms can be structured for issuance based on school enrollment or being a rostered player however. Fanstake can issue multiple agreements to encompass future seasons (with the same contributor protections) if desired.

Fanstake has boosting/matching directly integrated into our platform, where a brand, collective or individual booster can choose to offer a match campaign with a ceiling on the amount they’re willing to match, and Fanstake reaches that school’s audience with a targeted fundraising campaign. Not only does this allow for advertising tax deductions, but it also leverages committed booster contributions into retail fan contributions, making every dollar more efficient than simple direct contributions.