Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - NIL company 98 Strong joins the show to discuss their work with student athletes

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

We are joined by 98 Strong, a Name, Image, and Likeness company designed to help all student-athletes benefit from their name, image, and likeness whether it's a field hockey player, a soccer player, or gymnast. They even have a few Iowa Hawkeye student-athletes.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are Locked On Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back Hawkeye Nation to a Thursday morning episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes Podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. As always, I am your host Andrew Wade, excited to be back for another show today. And after you get done listening to the Locked On Hawkeyes on the Lockdown Sports Network. As always, I am your host, Andrew Wade. Excited to be back for another show today. And after you get done listening to the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast, there is simply no better place to get all the news on the Big Ten Conference

than with Nate Dickinson and the Lockdown Big Ten podcast. Follow the Lockdown Big Ten podcast on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast app. And on today's show, we have a very special episode. It's not necessarily entirely Iowa specific, but name image likeness is such a hot topic amongst everyone in college sports, athletes, fans, administration, you name it. Everyone has their eyes on name image likeness. And we have a really unique opportunity to bring on the founders of 98 Strong, a company geared towards monetizing name image likeness for student athletes, all student athletes, right? Not just those big name football players or the big name basketball players, but the lacrosse team, the field hockey team, the soccer team, the tennis team.

team, the tennis team, they are focused on monetizing name image likeness for all of these student athletes because their market, their follower base or their fan base is going to be more loyal and passionate to what they are seeing from these student athletes. So it's a really cool concept and they already have several Iowa Hawkeyes currently signed up with them at 98strong.com and we have several Iowa Hawkeye athletes that listen to this show. So I thought it'd be a really cool opportunity to talk a little bit about how they started this idea, what their monetization strategy is for these athletes, and why this is such a unique and great opportunity that maybe some people aren't aware of.

So with that being said, we're going to get into that conversation with 98 Strong here in a second. Just a reminder, we do have a show dropping tomorrow. We talked a lot about basketball and recruiting on yesterday's show and the draft. The two shows before that, we have Matt Purdy, former Iowa offensive lineman on the show. So if you haven't listened to those episodes, make sure to go back and do that. And then on tomorrow's episode,

we either have a fantastic interview with an Iowa football commit or we're going to be talking about any news that breaks. So be tuned for tomorrow's episode as well. That being said, though, let's get into the conversation with the founders of 98 Strong right now. All right, y'all, it has been an interesting time in the NCAA community as we have name, image, likeness rights are allowed for student-athletes

to try to take advantage of and capitalize on. And we've been talking about that a lot and what some Iowa athletes are currently doing today. We are joined by the folks from 98 Strong, a company that is trying to assist athletes and being able to capitalize on their name, image, likeness, one to get an interesting perspective from these guys. So first and foremost, how are you guys doing today? I appreciate you hopping on. Doing great. Thank you so much for having us. We're excited to dive into everything. I love it, man. How did you guys start with this idea? How did this come up?

So back in like November, um, you know, I, we, my co-founder and I both played water polo and a couple, a couple of States were becoming legal. Florida, Alabama was on the horizon. I'm like, Oh, this is interesting. We can maybe do something with this. Then April, we launched our website and then July one, this all blew up in our face, went from six kids on our platform to over 600. But the idea of 98 Strong stems from the fact that 2% of college athletes are going to go pro. Got the NBA, NFL, MLB, they're going to make millions of dollars after school. And then you got another 98%, the water polo players, football players that won't go pro, that will never have an opportunity outside of their four years to capitalize. And these kids might only have a thousand followers on social media, but they're still extremely valuable. And we want to make sure we can help them benefit off this ruling, just like a 2% would. I think that's interesting because when I thought about 98 strong, I almost looked at it from a sense of there are so many student athletes that

are kind of getting overlooked, similar to what you said, right? They're not going pro necessarily, but you have 90 players in the Iowa football team and 2% of them are going to probably take up 98% of the endorsement deals. So what can you do to maximize it for the other 2%, which I think is was really cool. And you said you have 600 athletes already. We do. Yeah.

That's amazing. How did, how did you promote it? How did you get the word out to these athletes? We have a really good social media, um, word of mouth. We try to talk to student athletes at every single campus around the country and be like, Hey, this is the place where if you're 98% or a basketball player that is a six-man or maybe doesn't get the spotlight as a starting point guard or a water polo athlete, this is your place to come and we can bring you value.

Whether that's $50 for an Instagram post, $100 for an Instagram post, brands see value in these athletes because of the authentic connection they have with their followers as a micro-influencer. So we just want to make sure it's as easy as possible for the sponsor to connect with the athlete and for the athlete then to get as big of a payout as they can. Yeah. And how do you tailor that message to both the student athlete trying to give them a personalized connection to whatever they're selling or utilizing their name and their likeness for while also doing it in a way that is scalable for your company?

Yeah. So the scalable way of doing it is we're able to go to a sponsor and say, you know, what's your target market, right? Do you want all Iowa student athletes? Do you want all Alabama student athletes? You know, we have a database that's growing and we're able to say, okay, that's amazing. We want 50 Iowa student athletes that want to rep Uptime Energy or whatever brand it is.

And from there, we're able to give them the 50 athletes that will cost the same as one two percenter. And all 50 of these respected, hardest working student athletes are promoting their brand all over social media, in and out of locker rooms, which is brand awareness flies is way more valuable than that one kid go in the NFL. Cause these kids are the most respected out there. The softball players, the water polo players, the baseball guys, like, and that's, that's how we're able to do it at scale. And, uh, you know, it's only growing and it's just the beginning. And yeah. And I would argue even that if you have, let's say someone who has 50,000 followers

and you have 50 people who have a thousand followers, those thousand followers are much more loyal and trustworthy of that person they're following as opposed to out of the 50,000, you probably have 4,000 maybe that really care or that actually, I mean, a lot of people just follow. I mean, I follow Tate Martell, for example. I'm not buying a single dang thing that Tate Martell sells that's not my connection i have to tate martell but you

and not to throw tate under the bus i'm sure he's a good human being but that my point is he has a lot of instagram followers but there's a lot of iowa players who don't have a big instagram following but i would trust them over tate martell and people are going to them exactly that's the point the whole sale to the sponsor is in their hometown, on campus, and arguably around the country. These are some of the most respected students, period. Like if you want to get in on the Iowa student, like get into the Iowa students and they have the most influence, period.

Because if I'm scrolling and I see, wow, like an Iowa softball girl is posting about this. I'm interested like as a former student athlete myself or someone that's following them because they only have 2000 followers. They're not selling out here. This must be something to actually have the connection to. All right. I'll need to quickly pause the conversation. I hope you are learning quite a bit about some of the name image likeness thing that they are working on from 98 strong. I do want to tell you, though, this episode is brought to you by rockauto.com.

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And how have you been able to identify the right brands and what brands have you brought in to this point for 98 Strong? So we're in discussions of a ton of brands at the moment. Some of our beginning brands is like one of them is Zane Robe, really cool Australian clothing company. They actually do work with like Kendrick Lamar. So a ton of athletes got a bunch of free swag and that was awesome. And the other one we're doing a lot of big stuff with is called Uptime Energy. They actually just partnered with the number one overall pick in the NBA draft and now they want to do a lot. Yeah. So they want to do a lot in the NIL space. And it's really exciting because the student athletes are, they love the drink and they also get the opportunity to make 50 to a hundred bucks on social media. And they only have, you know,

2000 or 6,000 followers. And then we're in discussions with a bunch of other brands, but it's been just really rewarding for us to see. And I think for the, for the students as well. And, you know, at this moment, every athlete's eager to be an influencer. There's, there's, they need some direction and how to do it and we keep it simple at 98 strong. It's just, we send them an email. Do you want to do this? Yes or no. Then one page contract, you know, I'll do this and get paid. Boom.

They get the product, they post, they get paid. There's no back and forth. Like they got school, man. They don't have, they don't have time to think about this. Let's make it easy. Like three-step process and you got money in your pocket. Yeah. And what's the process for bringing players in or do they have to apply to you? Are you reaching out to people or is it a mix of both? Mix of both. We have some that just sign up like through word of mouth. We reach out to some student athletes, you know,

and this process cannot be easier. It's not an application. Like we had in our past deal, some D2 d3 student athletes that were on like squash and soccer teams get deals like we're not concerned every student athlete is valuable period so they just have to put in their name instagram handle email um you know on our website 98strong.com and then from there we can go out and pitch pitch for them and just compete for them. And we have a pretty big team at this point and you know,

it's been really cool. Yeah. And so not to compare this to Barstool sports, that's not what I'm intending to do, but Barstool sports obviously has their Barstool athlete program. And there's a lot of interesting tidbits coming out about how the players are getting into that and like the legality of some of those contracts and from everything i'm hearing i just want to give you the opportunity to give give this platform to talk about it from everything i'm hearing there's no downside for these student athletes

to join 98 strong you join 98 strong and if you like the deal you do it and if you don't you don't but you're not required to give up any of your image or anything like that to you absolutely not no absolutely not there was like we're not exclusive, right? If you have another deal, go take it. Like, we're not trying to prevent you from doing anything. We don't want to use your image unless if like you're involved in a deal and like, we can just grow your brand that way. Like we're not trying to like, like as a former student athlete ourself and being founded by athletes, we're not that type of company where we're going to like use first of all barstool posts a lot of images of athletes in university stuff and they're also gifting the university kids stuff

so there's a lot of fine lines that are being walked there from a compliance standpoint and the typical barstool fashion yeah it's like a very fine line of like what is legal there and what isn't and that's great i mean it's great for the athletes to get that clout and get that free swag. But our number one thing in 98 Strong is compliance. Like we have a team of lawyers that are working daily to figure out university individual rules. Like anytime we set an opportunity,

we give the athlete time, report it to your school, come back to us. You know, there's a process to this and it can't be rushed. Like the number one thing is compliance and eligibility and it's free. Like we will do all the work. You just got to post and you get paid. I love it. And you're a student athlete as well, right? So I graduated in 2020 from George Washington. Okay. And what would you have done if you had the ability to make some money off your name and there's likeness?

I only had a thousand followers. So alone, I wouldn't have done anything. And I would have signed up for 98 Strong because I mean, as a 98 percenter, I don't see any other platform that's working for these kids that have a thousand followers. Because everybody's like, they're not valued. Where us, we're like, you don't get it. Like, these are the cream of the crop. because everybody's like they're not valued what we're us we're like you don't get it like these are the cream of the crop you know they're the most respected people out there in the college world that's awesome just to just to add to what andrew is saying as well like you know andrew's you know a little humble he was a phenomenal water polo player we played club water polo

together for years and i coach now at that club and i know like when kids when andrew comes back for a practice whether that was like winter break fall break spring break during the summer to train like the kids looked up to him and you know if they saw andrew's doing something specific in terms of like a product he was using these kids would take notice of that and they they may, maybe they don't follow Andrew on social media, but they see him, you know, at practice and they see he's using, you know, he's drinking up time energy or he's wearing a certain, you know, brand of clothes. These kids look up to these athletes in their community. It's not, you know, and that's,

that's a big part of these athletes' value that you don't necessarily, you're not going to get with these top, top 2% athletes. You're not going to see, let's go with Tate Martell. Tate Martell is not going back to his hometown and playing with, you know, with the team he grew up playing with and like being around these kids and like showing them stuff. He's just on social media. He's going to be training with other two percent athletes you know so there's there's this massive value there

as well that can be really quickly overlooked uh by these companies as well and like i said like an athlete like andrew they go back to their club these kids are looking up to them they're incredibly respected by their coaches, by their peers. And, you know, that's the best thing about this is we're able to help every single athlete. It doesn't matter whether you have 200 followers or, you know, 10,000, we can help anybody. We, you know, as long as you sign up and you're interested in doing, you know, some sponsorship deals, we can help you. All right, y'all. One more pause before we get into segment three of the show, our final piece of the conversation with 98 strong.

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And you'll get a 50% welcome bonus on your first deposit. After you get that free account, but online.ag your online sports book experts. That's super cool. Yeah, no, that's awesome. And do you have any current Iowa athletes on your platform to this point? Yeah, we do. A couple of track and field athletes, Volleyball Girl. I don't want to say their names, but the athletes absolutely do have a couple of Iowa. And the way we actually got them is they were, one of them reached out to us and we're like,

hey, you know, I signed up for this other platform and I realized like I don't have 10,000 followers. I can't get anything. Like, can you get anything. Like, can you help me? Like, we will absolutely try. Like we will, within the next couple of months, we'll have something in your inbox, you know, other places you it's a lot of matchmaking, Tinder swiping esque type platforms with us. That's not how it works. We sell the athlete and we sell them as individual and their character. And that's really cool. I think. Yeah. That's awesome. Very exciting.

You have some Iowa athletes as well. Hopefully you can continue to continue to gain some more. What else would you like to kind of just give an overview of in terms of the company and what you're doing? I'm pretty sure I asked most of the things I wanted to get a sense of. So I want to make sure I'm giving you a chance to talk about anything else you wanted to add in there. Yeah. Hugh, you got anything?

Yeah. I mean, I was reading an article earlier today from a, I think it was like a local Des Moines paper. And it was, it was about a girl on the field hockey team talking about how she, you know, she only has a thousand followers compared to a kid on the football team with like 10,000 followers and he's getting deals and stuff. And it's like, you know, that that's the point we're trying to drive home is that all of these athletes are valuable and

are respected in their communities. And they shouldn't be concerned about the amount of followers they have compared to everybody else. You know, it's good to now really start building your brand. And a lot of universities are actually starting to help students with that in terms of they're finding platforms that help students build their brands and understand like the financial side of things. But this is a way that we can, we simplify it for the athlete so that you don't have to worry about the compliance part of it. You don't have to worry about, you know, all the contracts and your name and image and likeness. Like we, you don't have to worry about, you know, all the contracts and your name and image and likeness. Like we, you don't have to worry about that. It's, we keep it simple. We want to help

you. And I think that's, that's really is the most important part. Like today athletes can build their brand overnight. You can go on Tik TOK, make a couple of Tik TOKs and blow up and have a couple thousand followers, a hundred thousand followers. And that's great. And, you know, we're there to help those athletes who are willing, who want to build their brands and really want to utilize this opportunity. Most of these athletes, they have four, maybe five years to, to monetize their athletic ability. And I'll use like Iowaowa as an example i was looking at the roster there's three kickers and three punters you know the likelihood they're not all gonna make it to the nfl unfortunately or you know the cfl like so this is a way that those guys they're working hard they

they deserve to make money right and so this is 98 strong is i think like i've looked at tons of other platforms 98 strong is the really truly the only platform that is out there to help all athletes you know doesn't matter what size your following is or your brand or what school you go to we want to help you guys out like we we've got a kid who's playing i think d3 basketball and in the middle of of iowa uh graceland university okay and it's just like we can help him we don't care where he goes to school anything like that we're just here to help the athletes it's athlete first you know we were most of the people involved were student athletes at some point so we're we're we understand student athletes and we're there to help them. Yeah. Well, that's super cool. Yeah. I mean, uh, I think this is a great platform to be able to start talking to some other, some other Iowa athletes as well. Um, and I appreciate you

guys joining me and coming on and reaching out and talking about this. I think it's really helpful for me to even see what are the benefits out there for some of the other athletes. Cause that was one of my biggest concerns. I'm like, well, of course, everyone should be able to benefit off their name, image, likeness. But I knew in the back of my head, I'm like there's a certain group of individuals who are really going to be able to benefit off of this. How do the other athletes get to take advantage of the situation?

Especially considering a lot of those athletes are in non-revenue generating sports that don't have a professional league. So they don't have that much time before they become a doctor or an accountant or a lawyer, whatever it might be. So definitely some really cool stuff. And so where can, where can folks find you? So the folks out there listening to this that want to join, where can they join 98 strong at? Yeah. So it's just 98 strong.com. And then also we have our Instagram,

which is pretty cool. We have pretty good graphic designs on there. It's just 98strong underscore. And there's a link in our bio. You can sign up. And then obviously the website is joinnoweverywhere. It's just a quick form. Sign up.

And all of a sudden we can go out and start competing for you and put you in some of these squads and over-deliver for the athlete. That's our whole thing. The going rate for influencers is generally like ten dollars per thousand followers we're generally able to pay a student athlete that has a thousand followers fifty dollars for a post in the story give or take depends on the situation depends on the deal but like our whole mindset is over delivered because every athlete is valuable there's no reason why if you have 10,000 followers, you should be making more or less like to us. It's like, it's just as authentic and just as powerful, which is pretty cool. Yeah. I'm actually looking at your Instagram now and I would agree. The graphics are pretty good. Big fan. Yeah. Not me. Yeah. So, but thanks for that.

That's awesome, man. Well, thank you guys for hopping. I really appreciate it. And good luck as you guys navigate this unchartered territory of name and there's likeness while you have other companies out there kind of doing whatever the heck they want to do in this wild, wild West community. Yeah. I really appreciate the time and giving us, giving us a platform to spread our message and help out student athletes around Iowa.

Can't thank you enough. Absolutely. Yeah. Appreciate you guys. All right, y'all. And that does do it for our show today. Can't thank you enough. Absolutely, man. Yeah. Appreciate you guys. All right, y'all. That does do it for our show today. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Definitely go check them out on Instagram and Twitter, 98strong,

and go check out their website. Some really cool stuff. Expect to see some Iowa Hawkeye athletes utilizing some of the name image likeness deals that 98strong secures for them. So really cool content. If you are an athlete out there listening, go check out 98 Strong. It does not require you to do anything. Just a few questions,

and they will work on the deals for you. They are not going to own your name, image, likeness. They are just trying to help you monetize and get paid for what you do in college. Super cool stuff. We are going to be back tomorrow, though, with a Friday episode of the show. We are either going to have an interview with the Iowa Football Commit

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Have a fantastic Thursday, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. And as always, let's go Hawks.