LSU is considering the creation of a new entity to house broadcast revenue it earns via the SEC’s media rights deal with ESPN, with the hope being that the private company could use the revenue for investments, creating a “perpetual revenue-generating model” to help “alleviate strain in an NIL era, where big-money contracts for both coaches and athletes have stretched donors thin,” according to a report by Alyse Pfeil and Jon Blau in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
The new entity would reportedly sell a nine percent stake to a private investor believed to be Acrisure CEO Greg Williams in exchange for a $100 million investment. Williams would then receive seven percent of any profits the business generates. The university would consider selling an additional 11 percent stake to other partners, with the athletic department “likely” to control 80 percent of the new company. The plan was shared with the school’s top athletics boosters last week.
LSU athletics have been hit with two very large and self-imposed bills this year: one from firing head football coach Brian Kelly with $54 million remaining on his contract, and another from hiring Lane Kiffin away from Ole Miss for an additional $91 million. Those coaching-related decisions have seemed to inspired LSU’s creativity from a revenue-generation standpoint…