— EDITOR'S NOTE

Volume 34. Brick by brick. I’m proud of what we’re building with No Huddle. It's on its way to becoming the go-to source covering the intersection of sports, business, and entrepreneurship. People want digestible sports-business coverage and early access to the next big thing.

Huge shoutout to our partners at Goodwin for the first-ever IRL No Huddle event. Small group, real conversations. More to come… and reach out if you want to be part of the next one.

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SF

👀 The show I've been teasing is finally here. Check out Episode 1 of The Colosseum below. 👇

🎙 IN THE POCKET

How I am seeing the field across sports, media, entertainment, wellness and CPG

"The stadium was full an hour early. So, I guess I had to leave to get them to do that. So, you're welcome."

That’s Lane Kiffin for you. In his LSU visor, as braggadocious as ever, after his former Rebel squad sent him back to Baton Rouge in front of 70,000+ in Oxford with an L. I have no dog in this fight, but that was nothing but cinema. The revenge tour, the hate, the passion, the signs, the electricity… all for a Week 3 game!

I was at a packed bar in the East Village with a bunch of NESCAC alums, none of which had any association to either team, but we were watching like it was a playoff game. Fandom has no bounds. The money knows it, too… And schools are just starting to really figure that part out.

Also last Saturday, up in Knoxville, the University of Tennessee ceremoniously grabbed a shovel to break ground on 865 Neyland. The project includes 100,000 square feet of entertainment space, 186 hotel rooms, 51 luxury residences, a 24-story tower, two plazas and a 50-foot stage all dropped into the space between Neyland Stadium and Food City Center (basketball) on campus. And a sick hype video to boast. The price? The complex is privately funded, expected to cost nearly $300 million, and will open in phases starting in 2027. And that’s on top of the $337 million poured into Neyland Stadium for renovations and premium suites.

We dug into this one in Episode 1 of The Colosseum, live now.

We’re seeing more and more of this: how can we get fans to come 365 days a year? And how can we make gameday weekends an experience that draws in alumni, students and fans from all over - like that group of NESCAC guys at a bar in the East Village.

Amidst all of the commotion in college sports, Ted Cruz joining College Gameday, players trying to come back to college AFTER playing in the NFL (?!), and the debacle of a ref show that was Western Michigan vs. Michigan in week 1, it feels like the product on and around the football field has never been better.

Cruz went on GameDay to pitch the Senate's college sports bill and got serenaded with “‘Ted, you suck" by the Texas crowd. That game, Texas-Ohio State, did 13.99 million viewers on ABC - the biggest Week 2 audience on record.

Lots to dig into there, and I'll get to all of it as we slowly expand our reach as an emerging, creator-led sports media company covering what people actually want out of this industry.

But one thing is clear: the fans aren't the problem here. I keep coming back to different variants of the same theme - Volume 29 covered Ballers, which sells membership as part of your identity, the kind of thing people want to tell you about so they can drop the "you should join." Volume 7 (On Location) and Volume 1 (Cosm) pulled on very similar threads.

It’s the same finding every time: people will pony up for a day they'll still be telling stories about. And if they feel a part of it - whether that’s as an alum, parent, local, or just fan - they are willing to pay a premium to get the full experience. College is a cheat code to this membership and identity yearning - some people are literally born into it!

Also on that spectrum is people's desire to compete. Volume 13 (Lucra) and Volume 16 (Schoolyard Social) were both bets that the competition layer is a business on its own, and both have held up just fine.

I've been preaching from the rooftops that college fan loyalty is the most concentrated, least commercialized asset in American sports, but sometimes asking the same people for more has a ceiling - especially when NIL has no bounds. And the pressure is real: 94% of Division I programs spent more than they generated last year, with the median school running a $20 million deficit, up from $12.3 million a decade ago. Tennessee can pretty easily raise $300 million privately. Sam Houston State cannot. The creative solution is to give everybody else a reason to show up and donate as well.

Meet Thropic Games, built by a former sportsbook CMO who took the fandom machine and pointed it to a wider, but just as rabid market.

More below. 👇

📺 THE WATCH LIST

A mini investment memo on the stars of tomorrow

The Company: Thropic Games

The Business in a tweet: Thropic is gamified fundraising software for schools, teams, nonprofits and brands. Fans play casual and “mini” games built around the themes they already follow, a dollar donated equals an additional entry toward real prizes, and the proceeds route back to the athletic department or the cause behind the game. Family Feud meets GoFundMe, with a first-party fan data layer running underneath it.

The 101:

If you’re interested in learning more or meeting the team, respond to this email or reach out to [email protected].

The Ole Miss pilot, broken down:

Thropic ran a four-week preseason campaign for Ole Miss called Road to Kickoff and priced the media the same way any sponsor's buy would be measured. For every $1K spent, the pilot produced 109,026 impressions, 53,231 accounts reached, 3,998 unique players and a cost per acquired player under $4.

The creative finding is what I find most interesting:

Three player-driven videos featuring Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss drove 29,186 combined post engagements at a 4.6% average video CTR and $0.22 CPC. The static branded graphic ran 2.41% and $0.34. The athlete on camera out-clicked the logo by 62 to 107% and cost 24 to 38% less per click.

Oh… and the whole Lane Kiffin drama probably helped too!

Source: Thropic Games

Deep Dive:

Pros:

Cons:

Comparables / Thropic Differentiator: Thropic is the only platform that builds a white-labeled gamified revenue loop into the client’s own software at every step of the consumer journey. GiveButter and Blackbaud hold the back office side of things while GiveCampus is a classic donation tool that many of us have seen. Thropic is here to work directly with schools and organizations and give them a co-pilot seat to all of the action, data and of course, revenue back to the school.

📶 THE SIGNAL · NO HUDDLE'S TAKE

Back in Volume 21, I wrote that college athletic departments are sitting on one of the most concentrated loyalty assets in America: thousands of emotionally invested alumni and fans, with little commercial infrastructure beyond a “donate here” button. Waypoint’s answer was to meet fans inside a purchase they were already making. Thropic is solving for the other side of that equation by giving fans a reason to show up, compete, and participate in a cause they already care about.

The charitable component I think is big here too. Thropic is not building the millionth version of a new peer-to-peer betting platform, but it’s using the familiar mechanics of picks, brackets, prizes, and leaderboards to make philanthropy feel more native to fandom. While college sports alone may be a large enough TAM to build a successful business, Thropic’s ability to white-label its platform for nonprofits and other partners expands the opportunity. Those organizations can run branded games around sports and culture, raise money for selected causes, and access payout and reporting infrastructure on the back end.

I love the way that the Thropic team has positioned themselves. Manchester United is worth ~$7.2 billion, with a claimed global fan base of 1.1 billion (about $6.55 per fan). The Lakers’ recent $12.5 billion sale values the franchise at $12.50 per roughly one billion global fans. But Spotify may offer a more useful comparison: the company reaches nearly 800mm monthly active users and understands who those users are, what they engage with, how often they return, and which of them have demonstrated a willingness to pay. The advantage is not just audience size. It is knowing the audience well enough to build a relationship beyond a single transaction.

Now put that in college terms. There is a massive gap between the booster who can write a seven-figure check and the recent graduate navigating rent, student loans, and the rest of adult life. Both may care deeply about the same school. Thropic gives them an accessible way to participate in the same ecosystem: compete in a game, support a team-adjacent cause, and potentially build toward a deeper relationship over time.

That is where the charitable-giving angle becomes especially interesting for college sports. A game can be tied to an athletic department, a specific program, a student-athlete initiative, a scholarship fund, a local community partner, or broader university priorities. For advancement teams, it creates a more engaging on-ramp than a generic annual-fund appeal—and potentially a way to identify who is most engaged before asking them for a larger commitment.

As we all know, college sports are at an old-fashioned stand-off between the haves and have-nots. Ole Miss just posted a record $107.9 million athletics fundraising year, nearly 38% of the entire university's haul. Schools that can do that are fine. The more interesting question is what happens at Fresno State, Butler, and the many programs with real alumni affinity but a fraction of the resources…and nobody calling with a nine-figure media-rights deal. And that’s where Thropic’s broader TAM comes into view. The customer is not necessarily just a college athletic department. It could be the university foundation, alumni office, a local nonprofit, corporate sponsor, or fan community itself. The same product can be deployed as a fan-engagement tool, a fundraising product, a sponsor activation, or a community-impact campaign. That flexibility is a meaningful asset as the college sports ecosystem continues to splinter across new revenue lines.

Kyle’s background in big tech and sportsbooks is a major lever here, too. Free-to-play prediction games have been a proven top-of-funnel engine in sports for years, but the bottom of that funnel has typically been a sportsbook - or - for prediction-market defenders, another form of financial participation. Thropic is betting that the same mechanics can lead somewhere different: toward affiliation, first-party data, and charitable support.

Thropic's underlying bet is that giving has a conversion problem rather than a demand problem. I tend to agree. Fans love their schools, but they feel turned off by a blanket “donate” button at the bottom of a robo-email. Thropic says 70% of the people who land on one of these games sign up… so maybe the thing standing between a fan and a gift was never the money.

If you’re interested in learning more, or meeting the team, respond to this email or reach out to [email protected].

No Huddle is for informational purposes only and is not financial or business advice. The content in this newsletter does not represent the opinions of any other person, business, entity, or sponsor.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Volume 21 on Waypoint covered the college loyalty asset sitting behind a donate button. Thropic gives fans a reason to show up, compete, and participate on the other side of that equation.

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