Akron Turned Virality Into Revenue

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This is a resource for sports organizations to generate more sponsorship revenue and for brands to get more from their sports partnerships by building sponsored content fans actually want to engage with.

In Today’s Edition:

• 💰 Turning Buzz Into Sponsor Revenue

• 🏌️ Bryson’s Sponsored Content Masterclass

• 📸 A Better Way To Sponsor The Team Photo

🏊️ DEEP DIVE
How Akron Turned A Ticket Promotion Into Sponsorship Inventory

Akron football had one of the best ticketing ideas in college sports this summer.

On August 4, the Zips announced that one season-ticket holder would get to help script the opening offensive series of their home opener against Robert Morris.

The response was immediate.

The original announcement generated 23 million views on X, becoming the most-viewed post by a college football team that summer.

Within 24 hours, Akron had also sold out its suites for the first time in program history and pushed past its annual ticket-sales goals with weeks remaining before kickoff.

Then some notable names started buying tickets.

Big Cat bought eight. Dan Dakich, Jon Gruden, and Bobby Bones entered too.

And Akron turned each one into another piece of the campaign.

• Big Cat, Dakich, and Pat McAfee got “rumored new hire” graphics.

• Moorhead’s appearance on The Pat McAfee Show became more content.

• Akron even borrowed from the Miami Heat’s infamous accidental LeBron James YouTube leak, jokingly posting a Big Cat introductory press conference as if he had already landed the job.

That responsiveness helped turn a ticket promotion into a story people could follow.

And it mattered because Akron didn’t have the owned audience of a major national program.

For this to become something much bigger than a clever season-ticket offer, other people needed to talk about it.

They did.

The Story Kept Getting Bigger

The initial media pickup put Akron in front of audiences it likely could never reach on its own.

But instead of treating the launch as the finish line, the program kept creating new chapters.

Eventually, the field was narrowed to 10 finalists. Akron called each one to deliver the news, mimicking the way NFL teams notify draft picks and creating another round of content before the winner was announced.

Then came the winner.

On August 25, longtime season-ticket holder Marty Whims II was announced as Akron’s Offensive Coordinator of the Game.

And there was now another name attached to the promotion: Arby’s Steak Nuggets.

That’s where the business story changes.

The promotion wasn’t originally built around sponsorship.

Its job was to sell season tickets, and it had already done that extraordinarily well.

But once Akron could point to massive social reach, ticket demand, and national attention, it had something else to sell.

The idea itself had become sponsorship inventory.

Then Came Arby’s

The timing was intentional on the brand side.

Arby’s brought Steak Nuggets back nationwide on August 24 as a limited-time offer. One day later, the product became presenting sponsor of Akron’s Offensive Coordinator of the Game.

That gave Arby’s a timely sports platform for a menu item it was actively trying to push.

From there, Akron carried the integration through the rest of the campaign.

During game week, the product became increasingly visible.

Arby’s fed the football team and brought a Steak Nuggets food truck to campus. Then game day effectively became an Arby’s takeover:

• Marty arrived wearing co-branded apparel and an Arby’s hat.

• His play-call binder carried the logo.

• Students received Steak Nuggets foam fingers.

• Steak Nuggets, curly fries, and a drink appeared on the table during the postgame press conference.

And beyond those obvious integrations, Arby’s branding appeared across much of Akron’s game-day social coverage, including regular highlights that weren’t specifically about Marty.

That last part is worth paying attention to.

There’s a bigger opportunity for teams to package tentpole moments this way.

A brand doesn’t necessarily need a different sponsored concept every time it appears.

A game-day takeover can give one partner visibility across pregame, fan content, highlights, press conferences, and postgame coverage while everything still feels connected to the same activation.

I’ve used a version of this before.

During the New York Knicks’ 2023 playoff run, we built a Playoffs Presenter Package that included sponsorship of all in-game highlights on X. The Knicks have continued using that approach since.

Even the day after the game, Akron kept it going.

Its victory recap caption included “Diced ’em up,” a nod to Steak Nuggets, and #WeHaveTheMeats.

Arby’s also activated heavily on its own channels.

While the brand’s 37 Akron-specific posts generated just 1,197 total engagements, I don’t think that makes the strategy unsuccessful.

It helped the brand participate in the moment in real time, with the much larger reach coming through Akron’s channels and national media coverage.

The Campaign Kept Delivering

To measure the campaign’s performance, Mondo Metrics used MondoTrends to analyze Akron’s owned content, Arby’s activation, and the earned media surrounding the promotion.

The data shows that broader distribution was backed by strong performance on the Zips’ own channels.

Across 72 Akron campaign posts, content tied to Offensive Coordinator of the Game averaged 1,066 engagements, compared with 363 for Akron’s other content during the same period.

That means the campaign performed at 2.9x Akron’s normal engagement rate.

Performance by phase looked like this:

• Announcement: 1,255 average engagements per post

• Winner + Arby’s reveal: 981

• Game day: 801

• Post-event: 1,011

The launch remained the strongest phase on a per-post basis, helped by the original viral announcement and the attention around notable entrants like Big Cat.

But the campaign didn’t need every phase to outperform the one before it.

The real success was that Akron sustained above-average interest for more than a month, all the way from the initial announcement through the aftermath of Marty actually calling plays.

The announcement produced the biggest owned-content spike.

The winner reveal gave people another reason to follow along.

Game day delivered the payoff everyone had been waiting more than a month to see: a fan actually calling plays for a Division I football team.

Engagement rebounded after the game, as Akron extended the story through recaps, reactions, and one especially clever callback — more on that soon.

While Akron’s owned audience sustained the story, game day also created another massive wave of national distribution.

Mondo Metrics tracked more than 75 earned-media posts across nearly 30 sports-media accounts, generating approximately 422K engagements and 13.5 million views.

A few standouts:

• House of Highlights on Instagram: 3.4M views / 98K engagements

• CBS Sports College Football on TikTok: 671K views / 47K engagements

• SportsCenter on X: 4.4M views / 35K engagements

• Bleacher Report on TikTok: 526K views / 40K engagements

The fact that earned media generated significantly more reach than Akron’s owned channels isn’t a knock on the owned strategy. That was how the campaign was supposed to work.

Earned coverage generated roughly 5.5x the engagement and 2.5x the views of Akron’s entire owned campaign.

Akron used its own channels to create a story larger publishers and personalities wanted to carry.

That amplification helped sell tickets without Akron having to pay for comparable media exposure.

Teams have an opportunity to build this kind of earned distribution into more campaigns, but comms is often brought in too late. I broke down how to fix that here.

One of the best examples of that amplification came from Big Cat.

Before the winner was selected, he had said on Pardon My Take that he wanted to run a play called Shark Wheel if he got the job.

He didn’t win.

Akron ran it anyway.

Afterward, Moorhead revealed that Shark Wheel helped produce the team’s first touchdown.

That gave Pardon My Take another reason to revisit a promotion Big Cat had technically already lost.

The clip added another 1M views and 6,000 engagements on X.

That’s the kind of detail that makes this campaign work as a story.

The promotion didn’t have one spike. Akron kept finding ways to give people another reason to come back.

One Sponsorship Watch-Out

There was one part of the Arby’s integration I would have changed.

After Marty was announced, Akron released a behind-the-scenes video showing how the staff found out who had won.

The video starts at an Arby’s.

Akron Director of Athletics Dr. Andrew T. Goodrich, orders food and talks about eating there in college before the story eventually moves back to campus and into the actual selection process.

I think that was too much.

The reason people were watching was to see how the winner was chosen.

And because Marty had already been announced publicly, there was even less reason to make viewers wait for the behind-the-scenes payoff.

Akron still had plenty of ways to give Arby’s meaningful exposure without starting there.

Marty’s name was pulled from an Arby’s-branded envelope.

Then Moorhead announced the winner and said: “Nothing goes better with game planning than roast beef and curly fries from Arby’s.”

He even finished with: “We Have The Meats.”

That integration worked much better for me because it happened inside the moment people wanted to see.

For a smaller athletic department in the Mid-American Conference that had suddenly created a new sponsorship opportunity, I understand wanting to maximize every available asset.

But securing the sponsor doesn’t mean every request should automatically make the final edit.

Performance is still important because stronger sponsored content creates more value for the partner and gives you a better argument for renewal.

The numbers don’t prove the Arby’s opening hurt the video, but the difference is notable.

• Akron’s Instagram winner announcement generated 6,720 engagements.

• The behind-the-scenes selection Reel produced 375 engagements on roughly 13,600 views.

There were other variables involved, so I wouldn’t pin that entire gap on the creative choice.

That said, getting to the selection faster would have made for a stronger piece of content.

The Other Thing I Would Have Changed

There was an even bigger opportunity around the drawing itself.

Before the winner was selected, several major sports-media personalities were in the running.

That created a tricky situation.

If Big Cat (one of the 10 finalists) had won, fans almost certainly would have questioned whether Akron rigged the promotion for publicity.

But choosing an everyday season-ticket holder meant giving up some of the extra distribution that would have come with a nationally known winner.

Akron had publicly said the selection would be random, although entries were weighted based on the number of season tickets purchased.

I would have livestreamed the drawing.

Better yet, coordinate the timing while Pardon My Take is recording or The Pat McAfee Show is live.

Big Cat is waiting to see whether his name gets pulled.

McAfee has a reason to check in.

Fans watch the selection happen in real time.

And Akron protects the credibility of the promotion because everyone sees exactly how the winner was chosen.

Arby’s could still own the moment.

1. Present the stream.

2. Keep the logo on-screen.

3. Build the brand into the graphics.

4. Integrate product throughout

5. Have Arby’s interacting in the chat or giving away free food.

Whether Marty wins or Big Cat wins, the selection becomes another media event.

The Takeaway

This campaign reinforces something I’ve written about before: the value of built-to-sell vs built-if-sold inventory.

It’s much harder to sell a concept when you’re asking a brand to buy something that has never existed.

There’s no historical performance, you don’t know exactly how fans will respond, and you’re estimating what the opportunity might deliver.

Akron ended up in the opposite position.

It launched an idea to sell tickets, the idea proved itself, then the partnerships team had actual performance and demand to take to market.

That’s the signal teams need to act on quickly.

If a new social series takes off, a ticket promotion catches fire, or an unsponsored marketing campaign consistently performs, get that information to partnerships.

You’re no longer selling a theory. You have evidence.

And Akron now has something beyond one successful activation.

It has a model.

Schools like Ohio State and Alabama probably don’t need to let a season-ticket holder help call plays to create demand.

Akron can build a different type of brand around giving fans experiences they genuinely can’t get anywhere else.

The next idea doesn’t need to be Offensive Coordinator of the Game.

It doesn’t even need to involve football.

But now Akron knows these kinds of experiences can sell tickets, generate national attention, and create new sponsorship inventory.

Next time, it can take that proof to market earlier. And with a longer sales window, it has a much better chance to maximize what that inventory is worth.

🔍️ SPONCONSPIRATION
Steal These Ideas

Bryson DeChambeau has launched the third edition of his annual daily series, Backyard Games, presented by Golf Clash. I don’t say this lightly: it’s a masterclass in sponsored content. The strategy is on point!

I’ve seen plenty of soccer teams in the U.S. sell sponsorship of the on-field team photo. Some only tag the brand in the caption. Others slap a logo directly onto the image. Both approaches have their flaws. I like what the Houston Dynamo came up with: incorporating Verizon into a prop that’s physically part of the shot. It feels much more natural while still giving the sponsor clear visibility. I’d still love to see Verizon tagged in the post, though.

Houston Texans mascot Toro took on the reflex challenge in partnership with H-E-B. It’s a fun concept that could work well across the grocery and convenience store categories, or really for CPG brands more broadly.

The team at Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment brought back its Solo Cup Challenge with the New York Liberty and Tissot, and it delivered again. Here’s the Nets version for reference.

We had a pair of strong partnership announcements in college football this week. Oregon took a comedic approach with Morgan & Morgan, playing off the connection between offensive linemen and attorneys. Meanwhile, UCF took its helmet to Walt Disney World to announce the theme park as the Knights’ new back-of-helmet sponsor.

🚨 ICYMI
Industry News & Insights

Don’t Skip These: With the NHL and NBA seasons right around the corner, now’s the time to review my new-season digital partnership checklist and make sure you’re ready for opening night.

Less Is More: Alyssa Meyers examines how Inter Milan cut its social posting by roughly a third while still seeing meaningful growth in followers, impressions, and video views [via Marketing Brew].

A Killer Carousel: Jack Appleby breaks down how Foot Locker turned a Jaws-inspired Nike Ja 4 carousel into an interactive Instagram experience built for the algorithm [via Future Social].

Think Beyond The Monitor: Matt Coy explains what’s holding teams back from creating better in-venue content, and why the fix starts with getting creative, production, and venue teams on the same page.

No Risk, No Reward: Expedia’s Lauri Metrose joined Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg on the Scalable podcast to reflect on the brand’s high-profile partnership with iShowSpeed, including what they’ve learned, why livestreaming is worth the risk, and how they’re measuring success.