How J Batt’s Spartan Ventures project compares to UK’s Champions Blue
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- At Michigan State, J Batt helped secure a commitment exceeding $400 million.
- Spartan Ventures was created to be independent of the MSU Board of Trustees oversight.
- Champions Blue employs athletics staff and reports to the UK BOT athletics committee
Tension with the Michigan State Board of Trustees has been cited as a factor in the departure of university president Kevin Guskiewicz and athletics director J Batt.
But one of the issues at the center of that conflict appears to have been a major selling point in Kentucky’s pursuit of Batt before hiring him as athletics director and CEO of Champions Blue LLC.
Kentucky’s news release announcing Batt’s hire highlighted his fundraising work at Michigan State and in his previous job as Georgia Tech athletics director.
“At Michigan State, Batt was instrumental with coaches and administrators in securing a more than $400 million commitment — the largest single gift in college athletics — and established Spartan Ventures, a nonprofit similar in focus to our Champions Blue LLC, to create new revenue streams and partnerships,” according to UK’s release.
Batt actually left Michigan State before Spartan Ventures officially launched, but the school announced shortly after his departure the new revenue-generating mechanism was still on track to begin operations July 1.
Batt’s role in the creation of Spartan Ventures could help him hit the ground running in his new role as Champions Blue CEO, but he was not ready to compare the two in an interview with the Herald-Leader shortly after being hired by UK.
“I’ve got to get in here and dig into them to really understand all the intricacies,” Batt said. “All of these sort of alternative setup structures are super specific and, what I would say, hyper local, but they all provide the flexibility to move work and be commercial.
“That’s really the key, is the ability to commercialize the business in a more optimized way to drive more revenue, to provide our coaches and student athletes the resources they need to be successful. Ultimately the fun is in the winning, and today that takes more than it’s ever taken. We got to continue to provide the structure and the resources to do that.”
UK has pointed to greater flexibility as the reason for creating Champions Blue, a subsidiary of the university’s Beyond Blue corporation that was built to manage the athletics department last year.
But Champions Blue was created to still report to the UK Board of Trustees’ athletics committee. Spartan Ventures was created to be independent of board oversight and is not subject to Michigan’s open records or open meetings laws. UK has stressed that Champions Blue and its other LLCs remain subject to Kentucky’s version of those laws.
At least three Michigan State trustees voiced concerns about that setup, which requires trustees to sign nondisclosure agreements to view Spartan Ventures documents.
“Athletics in America and in college has gotten to be a monster,” Michigan State trustee Mike Barlow said during an April board meeting, according to the Lansing State Journal. “It is professionalized in every way, shape or form as we all know, the big sports. But we mustn’t forget that athletics are a part of a university, part of a much larger whole. They are not standalone professional teams, they are subject to the oversight of the elected Board of Trustees in this case, and we have to focus on transparency.”
In a January presentation to the Champions Blue Board of Governors, a Deloitte consultant actually used Michigan State’s plan as an example of one of the models with the least amount of structural change across college sports. In a chart with four categories ranging from the least change on the left to most on the right, Michigan State and Kentucky were placed at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Spartan Ventures will not include management of Michigan State’s athletics programs. Instead, it will focus on raising revenue for the school’s name, image and likeness deals. It will contain a for-profit subsidiary called Spartan Media Ventures designed to optimize media rights and branding opportunities.
At UK, athletics employees will actually work for Champions Blue instead of the university.
The clearest similarity between the two LLCs appears to be a certain degree of vagueness from administrators about how exactly they will operate. That uncertainty is at least partially explained by the ever-changing set of rules in college sports.
“The reality is you’ve got to build the right structure to stay nimble, and you’ve got to have the right differentiated fan base to take advantage,” Batt told the Herald-Leader. “When I talk about the landscape changing, that’s exactly right. So, what are the guidelines? What are the rules? How do we work within those rules? We’re going to win, and we’re going to win the right way. This is going to be done with integrity, as it has been done here.
“You’ve got to stay flexible and nimble, though, and that’s part of what Champions Blue does for us. It creates a structure that allows us to be able to move and react and even anticipate changes. I think it’s important that we look forward to what is the next change and how do we do that in the right way.”