Investment Firm Pledges $1 Million in NIL Match Campaign for Minnesota Athletics

A local investment firm with ties to the university is ready to match contributions for the schools NIL Collective.

Matt Krohn-Imagn Images

The Minnesota Gophers have a tremendous opportunity ahead of them. 

From now until November 10th, all new members who contribute to the program's NIL collective will be matched.

A local investment firm based in Minneapolis, Nepsis Inc., has announced it has partnered with the University of Minnesota’s official collective, Dinkytown Athletics, on a Million-Dollar Match campaign. The company pledged to match all new or upgraded membership contributions towards the collection of up to $1 million. The focus of the match will benefit both the Minnesota football and volleyball programs. 

The investment firm is led by Mark Pearson, a 1987 graduate of the university. 

“It’s been a long time in the works, and I couldn’t be more excited about multiple things happening, including helping Coach Fleck and the Gophers,” Pearson said to the Minnesota Star Tribune, “Coach and I really hit it off on a personal level. He thinks a lot the way I do in terms of what he does in mentoring young men to prepare them for life. Football is just a stop along the way in a life’s journey.”

It is a huge advantage for the university that fellow alumni are interested in helping at this magnitude as the program fights to stay relevant in the ever-challenging Big Ten Conference. With the new landscape of college sports that has emerged thanks to NIL, not every school has a full grasp on how to capitalize on the best. With help from Pearson and other donors, the Gophers will take an enormous step forward in that initiative. 

Minnesota's athletic director, Mark Coyle, expressed his gratitude to Pearson, as this new strategy behind college sports is here to stay.

“NIL is not going away, and I promise you, our kids are doing work,” Coyle said on a Gophers pregame radio show. “They’re doing this the right way.”

Minnesota is 5-3 after its recent 48-23 win over the Maryland Terapins. It will be back in action this Saturday on the road against the 24th-ranked Illinois Fighting Illini. The game is scheduled for Noon ET and will be on FS1. A win will make the program bowl-eligible for the fourth straight season under Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck.