Indiana Athletic Director Scott Dolson Discusses Big Ten Media Deal, Approach to NIL

Indiana University Vice President and Director of Athletics Scott Dolson talked to the media on Monday ahead of the 2022 Indiana football season. He discussed the Big Ten's new media rights deal, Indiana's approach to NIL and more.

Jack Ankony | Aug 29, 2022

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In anticipation of a new Indiana football season ahead, Indiana Vice President and Director of Athletics Scott Dolson talked to the media on Monday. Indiana football opens its 2022 campaign as three-point favorites over Illinois (1-0) in the Friday night matchup at Memorial Stadium at 8 p.m. ET.

The Hoosiers are coming off a 2-10 season in 2022, but Dolson said he has noticed a different edge and strong leadership as Indiana hopes for a bounce-back season.

"I'm really excited about Tom [Allen] and the staff and excited for the players," Dolson said. "To be honest with you, since the Purdue game ended last year, it's been fun for me to watch Tom roll up his sleeves and then the players follow, just really get after it, and couldn't be more happy with just the process. I'm a big process person. I think you don't just show up at the game and expect different results. You've got to put in the work, and I know Tom feels the same way."

In an opening statement, Dolson addressed the Big Ten conference's new media rights deal that is projected to be worth over $7 billion across seven years.

"It's going to be incredible with media rights in terms of our brand and the exposure for our students athletes in our programs," Dolson said. "The financial impact will be significant, and it is critical, but quite frankly it's one of those things that don't believe everything you read. It's going to be good, but it's going to take some time to ramp up. I'm not saying anything to minimize the deal, but what I've had to do is make certain that particularly internally people understand that there's going to take some time. Those deals are generally backloaded. We've got a lot to sort out before we really start to alter budgets or anything like that, but again, it's a tremendous deal. We've done a lot of managing expectations on that end. From our media partner standpoint, really excited with, again, the vision that Commissioner [Kevin] Warren had with that deal, making certain that we really still have the linear networks that we're partnering with in terms of FOX and CBS and now adding NBC and then certainly our partnership with BTN."

When asked if the new media rights deal will lead to any facilities upgrades or budget expansion, Dolson said the deal is backloaded and a lot of details are still to come. He also noted a student-athlete scholarship that was announced this summer.

"The reality is that the way things are changing and the way that our budget is just – like many of your budgets are increasing, I feel like we've already kind of spent it in a way," Dolson said. "We announced this summer the Alston Award, which is an academic award that we'll award to any student-athlete who qualifies for it this year, and that's about a $3 million hit to our budget, so in a way, as the media rights details come out and as that grows over time, I feel like that will allow us to really keep pace and to be able to do things we need to do to support our student-athletes, but I really don't look at it as a real windfall. The staff that are here, they were at our all-staff meeting this past Wednesday, that was part of my message was, because what you just asked or I think what a lot of people started thinking is that it's going to be a huge uptick at one time, and again, it's a steady stream over time, mainly backloaded, and again, a lot of that is already taken into consideration in what we're planning for the future to support our student-athletes."

But in the short term, Dolson recognized a few tangible upgrades to Memorial Stadium that will be seen on Friday night.

"We've got new lights in the stadium, which has been something that we've needed for a while," Dolson said. "We've had to rent lights for night games because the coverage – those were the original lights put in I believe in the early '80s, so we're really excited to have modern, state-of-the-art LED lighting going in the stadium which should be ready for Friday night. That's a big deal. I'm excited also about our new team store," Dolson continued. "We've partnered with Legends, which is an up-and-coming outsourcer of all apparel sales. We're still obviously an Adidas school, but the Legends family will be handling all of the team sales as well as our e-commerce, and hopefully – I like to under-promise and over-deliver. I don't like to make big statements, but I think you'll see an improvement there, and couldn't be more happy with them."

The world of college athletics has been in a constant state of change over the last few years, and the Big Ten has been at the forefront with the addition of UCLA and USC to the conference before the 2024 season.

The NCAA adopted a policy on June 30, 2021 to allow student-athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness. Dolson said the Indiana athletic department started working on NIL opportunities a year before the NCAA passed such policy, and he feels Indiana has as many, if not more, resources working towards NIL than anyone else.

"Becky Pany, who's a senior associate AD over at sports management, she really has been the quarterback of our NIL efforts. Really for the past two years, I guess you could say, has really been working as that central person really coordinating everything. Jeremy Gray, another senior associate AD, is really working closely with her on the brand side of things, building brands for our student-athletes so they can maximize the opportunity. Then we have various other people. We formed an NIL task force. We bring in departmental staff and also people from across campus, Dr. Galen Clavio at the media school, Ash Soni, who's the interim dean of the Kelley School of Business, to really work on what is our vision for NIL efforts. I think at other schools they've chosen to do it a little differently maybe and hire a specific position that's not someone within their team, but for us we just had the capacity and I felt like the talent that we really could do it internally and not have to bring in someone from the outside. I feel like we've got probably as many if not more resources working towards NIL than anyone else and feel comfortable where we are from a staff standpoint."

At the same time, Dolson believes there needs to be guardrails on NIL to allow for fair competition. He does not want NIL to be set up as 'pay for play' or an inducement for players to choose a certain school. Dolson also prefers to operate as an athletic department without a state law regarding NIL.

"I think it's much easier and much more conducive for success and for consistency without a state law," Dolson said. "I think there was sort of a panic when there wasn't a state law that we're going to be left behind, but actually being able to just follow the NCAA rules and then develop our own internal policy was a much better path for us. I think you see it that states that have passed laws are now altering them based on how NCAA rules are interpreted or different things sort of as it's unfolded. I think we've had a ton of support, again, across campus. I think our alumni, I mentioned the collectives, you saw the fan fest that happened with Hoosier Hysterics, and they did a terrific job with that, and I think you'll see more. We'll be aggressive as we can be within the rules to make certain our student-athletes maximize this opportunity."

Despite a disappointing season for Indiana football in 2022 that didn't live up to Dolson's standards, he said the renewal rate for football season tickets is at 98 percent, and student ticket sales are up by 10 percent. As things currently stand, Indiana has sold about 26,000-plus in season tickets, which is roughly half of Memorial Stadium's capacity of 52,626.

"We rely heavily, which we have for years, on the single game sales, and again, those are trending in a great direction," Dolson said."We expect that this Friday night we'll be in the low 40 [thousands], and hope to grow from there. Again, just couldn't be more appreciative of our fans. Sometimes I think unjustly so, I think sometimes our football fans maybe take some criticism, and I don't think that is warranted at all. I think our football fans are as loyal as they come. Again, this year's results are a real indication of that."

Indiana recently announced a partnership with Molson Coors as the official beer sponsor of IU athletics. Dolson noted that Upland, a company that handles alcohol sales at Indiana sporting events, will also be a sponsor.

"Just to clarify that, we still have the same beer offerings. That doesn't mean [Molson Coors] is the only beer that will be sold here, for those of you who might be interested in that category ... We separate the sales from the sponsorships. So we're really excited about that and appreciative of IU Sports Properties and the great job that they do."

As for expansion of alcohol sales at Indiana sporting events, Dolson said the success at football games could open the door to continued expansion. Last spring, Indiana opened alcohol sales at Indiana baseball and softball games, and recently announced sales at soccer games.

"It has gone extremely well to date," Dolson said. "Data really shows from the time we implemented it the first year at Memorial Stadium that our incidents actually went down, our alcohol-related incidents, and I think controlling the environment has proved to be successful. So we'll continue to evaluate. We did announce that we expanded that to soccer. We're currently looking at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall to see if that's something we may or may not do, but I am a big proponent of making certain that we're keeping up with what our fans would like to see from a fan experience standpoint. The feedback we received from our fans, even going back to the spring with baseball and softball has been really, really well received and handled really well, so we'll continue to grow that and to look at ways that we can maximize that opportunity, but keeping in mind responsibility drinking, managing the process in a way that we don't put any other fan in a precarious position by having alcohol served."

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