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What a university's deal with Pitbull says about changing economics in college sports

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Sports arenas are often known by the names of banks or big tech companies. This weekend, though, Florida International University's football team will play at Pitbull Stadium. Yeah, that Pitbull - the rapper, the singer. Wailin Wong and Adrian Ma at The Indicator From Planet Money explore what this unusual deal reveals about the changing economics of college sports.

ADRIAN MA, BYLINE: Scott Carr is director of Athletics at Florida International University. But beyond that, Scott sort of sees his job as promoting the university itself.

SCOTT CARR: We are one of, if not the strongest marketing arm for an institution, right?

WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: Scott says, nothing quite builds a school's brand like sports and one sport in particular.

CARR: If you really want people to know who you are, be great in football.

MA: The only problem with that is that FIU is not great at football.

WONG: To be fair to FIU, its football program hasn't been around for that long.

MA: So how does the school football team get better, then? Well, of course, it has to attract better players. And how does it do that? Well, the simple answer is money. A school with more money can hire better coaches and give out more scholarships. But that money has got to come from somewhere, and finding it has become more complicated in recent months.

WONG: For one thing, a couple of years ago, the main governing body of college sports, the NCAA, got rid of an old rule that prohibited athletes from earning money off their name, image and likeness. As a result of this change, donors and corporate sponsors who, in the past, would have given money directly to a school can now give money directly to athletes.

MA: Compounding this issue is a second major shift expected to happen next year. In a proposed settlement in a lawsuit involving the NCAA, schools may soon be able to start sharing revenue from things like ticket sales and sponsorships with student athletes.

WONG: The hunt for new revenue led Scott and his colleagues to do what more and more schools have done in recent years, which is lease out the naming rights to their sports facilities. In FIU's case, this is a 20,000-seat football stadium. And that is when they approached a man named Armando Christian Perez, aka Pitbull, and Pitbull agreed to pay FIU $6 million to have his name on the stadium for five years. Here he is talking about the deal on ESPN.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PITBULL: You know, coming from Miami, you got that chip on your shoulder where you're just the underdog of all underdogs. And you're constantly trying to figure out ways on how to do things that nobody's thought of or they thought that it was unbelievable and impossible.

WONG: But why didn't FIU do a name deal with, let's say, a bank or a tech company or a Fortune 500 company with super deep pockets? Scott says, it was about generating buzz.

CARR: There's not another college stadium that's named after a musician. If we had named our stadium after that Fortune 500 company, you and I had never met each other, and we're probably not doing this interview.

WONG: Scott says, he got a company to estimate the amount of media exposure the school has gotten in the two weeks after they announced this Pitbull stadium deal, and he says it was estimated to be worth around $86 million. So I guess we're kind of a part of this, too.

MA: I think bait, set and hook.

WONG: (Laughter) As part of the deal, Pitbull will help the school with fundraising, promote the school on social media and even write a special Pitbull stadium song. We should say, lest we give the impression this is a philanthropic endeavor for Pitbull, that it is also a multidimensional moneymaking opportunity for him. He has the right to sell on-field advertising space. Pitbull also owns a vodka brand, which will be sold in the stadium. And maybe the biggest deal of all - 10 days a year, he gets to use the stadium rent-free. So he could throw a concert. He could lease it out. He could, like, throw a children's birthday party and offer pony rides.

MA: That would be an epic, epic kid's birthday party.

WONG: Wailin Wong.

MA: Adrian Ma, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF PITBULL AND NE-YO SONG, "TIME OF OUR LIVES") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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