Hoosier Hysterics fan fest opens IU basketball season for fans, NIL dollars for athletes

BLOOMINGTON – A year ago, as name, image and likeness reform graduated out of its infancy and into a world of unknown evolutions and consequences, Eric Pankowski and Ward Roberts were trying to find their bearings.

IU alums with successful careers and a popular Indiana-centric podcast, The Hoosier Hysterics, Pankowski and Roberts had started an NIL collective: HH NIL. Now familiar in college sports, collective was then a new-era term describing a sort of clearinghouse that can raise funds to facilitate NIL deals targeted at athletes of particular schools.

Pankowski and Roberts wanted theirs to find the right entry points into a burgeoning — and uncertain — space. They facilitated arrangements between IU athletes and local businesses, and explored new opportunities in a market where some of the most obvious opportunities for athletes (clothing, merchandising and other retail ventures) were also some of the least scalable.

More:Hoosiers For Good helps connect IU athletes with NIL opportunities now tax deductible

They hit on an idea: A fan fest, including IU basketball players and meant to give fans and the team direct access to one another, with all proceeds going back to the athletes themselves.

“What we found was, this was the perfect way to get players NIL and have them perform a real service,” Pankowski said. “For a few hours, they get to connect to fans in a real, visceral way, make NIL money and give back to the community.”

The event was a success. Less than a year later, Pankowski and Roberts are ready for Round 2, this time armed with experience in NIL, a clearer view of the wider picture, and ambitions of making their event part of the annual basketball calendar in Bloomington.

The weekend of Aug. 18-21, the HH NIL Collective will sponsor and host a wide-ranging, fan-driven weekend in Bloomington, the 2022 Hoosier Basketball Fantasy Experience.

Events range from an IU basketball fantasy camp put on with the help of G3 ProCamps, to a round of golf with current IU coaches or notable program alums, to a fan fest inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Saturday night and a skills camp with Indiana’s women’s team Sunday.

It’s a scaled-up version of the same event Pankowski and Roberts built last season.

Given more time to plan, more interested partners to engage and more time to understand the ins and outs of the NIL landscape, they were able to execute an event even more wide-ranging in Year 2. Pankowski said he hopes the event cements into the annual calendar as a celebratory kickoff event for the IU basketball season, in much the same way spring training serves baseball.

“We don’t have to wait until late October or November for this to get kicked off. We would like this weekend to be an annual event, a celebration of Indiana basketball,” Pankowski said. “Especially at Indiana, where basketball is so important and so revered, it just feels like, why not take advantage of it? …

“Everybody’s just kind of celebrating that we’re just kind of back to this thing we love.”

The first year of name, image and likeness has been a turbulent one for college sports. It’s opened new doors for athletes while raising fundamental questions about some of the institutions’ oldest and most sacrosanct practices.

People like Pankowski and Roberts, who have navigated the space from its beginning, have witnessed its evolution firsthand. They were the first organized collective operating around IU athletics, giving them an up-close look at the shifting schools of thought related to NIL since it became legal activity July 1, 2021.

Of particular importance for this event: departmental involvement.

At its outset, general wisdom held that it was good policy for departments to keep their distance from NIL activity. It needed to occur between athletes and partners, brands or businesses, with little to no institutional involvement. State laws even spelled that out.

That attitude has begun to change. Leaders around college athletics, fearing NIL has become too unregulated and uncontrolled, have begun advocating for athletic departments to put a hand on the wheel. Tennessee and Louisiana recently amended their state laws to expressly allow involvement that was once verboten.

In states without an NIL law, like Indiana, schools have been left to write and amend their policies as NCAA recommendations and general attitudes toward the issue shifted. The loosening of restrictions on how involved in name, image and likeness activity department employees can be — with some important remaining restrictions Pankowski pointed to, like not using NIL deals as recruiting inducements — make events like HH NIL’s forthcoming event run even more smoothly.

“There was another thing happening over the last year that made these (events) more possible and more palatable: Athletic departments got more comfortable with what NIL is, what are the rules, what are they allowed to do?” Pankowski said. “This world of the athletic departments having to be arm’s distance from the stuff, that arm’s distance got shorter and shorter over the last year.”

The centerpiece of the weekend will be the fan fest, which will include autograph and picture sessions before and afterward, skills competitions and a public scrimmage involving members of the 2022-23 men’s basketball team.

Tickets range from $5 for seats in Assembly Hall’s main level, up to $149 to sit courtside. The event begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 20, with doors opening an hour earlier. Pankowski said fans will stay engaged through the evening with fan interactions and skills challenges, like an alley oop contest.

Pankowski and Roberts intentionally scheduled the event after most students move back to campus, to offer anyone interested the chance to be a part of the weekend.

“The fan fest is literally for everyone,” he said. “We want families, students, anybody to come be part of that.”

The fan weekend isn’t HH NIL’s only focus. The collective still works on the marketing side, helping players connect with business partners in name, image and likeness deals.

But Pankowski is particularly passionate about the idea of using the space to connect athletes and fans more directly. This year’s event is already substantially more wide-ranging than its predecessor, and Pankowski said he wants to keep exploring ways to expand it in the future.

“Our idea was, we just create a weekend that is a celebration of Indiana basketball that can appeal to as many parts of the fan base as we can,” he said. “It connects fans to players in a way you don’t often see, and as a fan, you don’t often get to experience.”

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU basketball NIL: Hoosier Hysterics fan fest opens season, NIL money