Coming Soon to a University Near You: Private Equity
Advocates fought for college athletes to get paid. They were right to. What got built is a mess — and a collision is coming.
On July 1, Crimson Brand Partners takes over commercial operations for the University of Utah's athletics department as part of a $100+ million deal that routes most of the department's revenue streams into a new for-profit entity, backed by private equity firm Otro Capital. From that day forward, every feature of college sports life gets pushed toward one giant question — is this making us enough money?
What Private Equity Actually Is
Private equity is not philanthropy. It is an aggressive financial vehicle that buys established operations and hunts for ways to extract more return from the same underlying business — usually on a short time horizon, with investor money typically locked up for years. And it expects a return on that investment that beats the stock market.
I am not against people making money. But make no mistake, this is dangerous.
We Can Already See What Happens
Apply that model to Utah's athletic department and we already see the early results: in the weeks surrounding the finalization of the deal, there have been layoffs and restructuring as resources get shifted into Crimson Brand Partners. Some people have been invited to reapply under the new for-profit enterprise, which surely has its own — different — mission statement.
If the University isn't careful, educating athletes will be reframed as just another cost to be managed rather than a societal mission. Even more than before, college sports will become a financial asset, not a path toward human development.
Why? Because that PE investment return has to come from somewhere. And the most monetizable asset is the athlete's performance on the field, packaged through NIL, media rights, biometrics sold into data-hungry markets, and other commercial deals that can funnel a premium back to the school and its investor-partners.
Utah Isn't Alone
Utah's AD says he's already fielding calls from other schools asking how to do the same. And the blueprint is out there: the Big 12 has its own PE deal with RedBird Capital, and the Big Ten nearly signed one worth $2.4 billion. This is not a one-off experiment — it's the beginning of a wave.
The Real Danger Is the Convergence
College sports has always had money — that's not new. What's new is the rapid convergence of new technologies and incentives like AI and biometric tracking, all arriving at once, with no coherent regulatory framework built for any of it. And now PE — the investors contractually situated to reap the financial rewards from all of this activity — is inside the building.
That combination is what makes this moment different. Each piece alone is manageable. Together, with private equity setting the financial agenda, they create enormous pressure on every decision that touches an athlete — their image, their health data, their performance, their time.
So Who Is Looking Out for the Athletes?
That's the question I keep coming back to. In this new field of play — with for-profit entities running commercial operations, investor returns on the line, and technology accelerating the monetization of everything an athlete does — who is actually looking out for the athletes? It's a question worth asking loudly, and often, before the answer gets quietly decided for us.