How Winning the College Football National Title will Impact Indiana's Merchandise Licensing Revenue

January 20, 2026

Staff Writer

Indiana University shocked college football fans by winning the College Football National title and no doubt those that follow the team are feeling the crazy energy. We ask the question, how will this victory impact Indiana’s merchandise licensing revenue?

What is merchandise licensing?

A quick explainer on what merchandise licensing is, merchandise licensing is when a brand, such as Idiana University licenses their brand to a third party company allowing them legal permission to produce products bearing their brand name. In this case, Indiana University might license their name and or logo to a third party company that has an expertise in producing sweatshirts, as a result of the licensing agreement between Indiana University and the third party company, consumers are able to purchase sweatshirsts bearing the name and or logo of Indiana University.

Why do brands like Indiana University licesed their name and or logo to third party companies? Indiana does this largely becuase they don’t have the expertise to product sweatshirts themsleves, said simply, Inaiana University is about education, not apparel production. But they also do this so they can access really high quality products in specific categories, for example, they can access high quality sweatshirts and have the Indiana brand applied, therefore producing a level of product their consumers demand. Lastly, brands like Indiana University enter into merchandise licensing agreements becuase licensing their brand produces royalty payments that bring revenue to the school.

How do royalty payments work?

As mentioned, a brand like Indiana University licenses their name and or logo as a source of royalty revenue. How exactly is royalty revenue produced? Step one, the brand establishes a royalty rate for the use of their brand, this is the amount the brand will charge the third party compony each time their name and or logo is used. For example, if a third party company produces 250 sweatshirts, the royalty rate will be applied to each of the 250.

The royalty rate is often expressed as a percentage. In the case of Indiana, we can speculate that Indiana University has a royalty rate charge of 15%. If we take the sweatshirt example further, Indiana would chanrge the sweatshirt company 15% for each sweatshirt produced, its common for the 15% charge to be applied to the wholesale cost of the sweatshirt. Meaning that if the wholesale cost of the sweatshirt is $30, Indiana University would receive $4.50 for each sweatshirt produced.

Will winning the College Football National Championship increase Indiana University’s Licensing Revenue?

Simply said, yes, winning the College Football National Championship will for sure increase Indiana’s licensing revenue. In fact, it should increase tremendously as there is nothing bigger than Football excitement when it comes to college sports, even if it occurs at Indiana University, a school that has tradtionally focused their attention on basketball.

Historically, Indiana University is typically not included in the ranking of the top 75 schools in the amount of merchandise revenue generated. However, with this suprising and huge nqtional football win, along with their success all season long, we suspect Indiana will not only crack into the top 75 ranking but will will go quite high up the rankings well. We say this as the top spots within the 75 ranking schools is reserved by consistently top performing football schools, such as the University of Texas, the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia.

While we expect Indiana University to rise high into the ranking of the top 75 schools for merchandise licensing revenue, we don’t expect them to break into the top 5 or even top 10, but likely somewhere in the top 15. Reason being, while the excitment of the Indiana fans is through the roof and they are no doubt buying tons of officially licensed Indiana University merchandise, the Indiana market in general is still small and with this being the first football national championship for the school, we feel the majority of Indiana football fans are fasn that are connected to the school, meaning they are alumni of the school, or they live in the geographic area of the school. As of yet, we don’t believe Indiana Football has the fan that is not connected to the school in some way, only schools that have won football consistently over the years, won the national championships or regularly in contention have the fan that is just a fan becuase of the winnng. Once the school has the fan just for the sake of winning, that is when you brand is more national and that is when roylaty revenue can really skyrocket.

Now imagine if Indiana could continue their fotball success and combine it with their reputation of winning on the basketball court, this would create a royalty revenue powerhouse at Indiana University, as basketball is second only to football in its ability to increase fan engagement and result in inclreased merchandise sales and increase royalty revenue.

What licensed products are Indiana Football fans buying right now?

Traditionally, when championships like this occurr the fans genrally gravitate to the official championship gear, an assortment of products that proudly show that their school is the national champion. And for Indidana we suspect their fans are buying the national champinhip gear in huge numberssending huge amounts of royalty revenue to Indiana University.

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From a merchandise licensing perspective, the national championship gear is interesting in that special royalty rate charges are sometimes applied to the products. For example, a regualr royalty rate for a school might be 15%, however, when it comes to national championship merchandise, the school may choose to apply a special 20% royalty rate. And when a schools apply higher roylaty rate, the price the cosumer pays at the store often rises along with it. The school may choose to do this as they know the merhandise will be so hugely popular that the fans will be buying merchandise without typical price sensitivity.

Final Thoughts

No doubt, Indiana University winning the College Football National Championship will have a positive impact on the amount of royalty revenue the school earns and for sure Indiana University will be included in the next publishing of the top 75 schools in merchandise revene. The question remains, how high on the list will they be,? Top 15 is our best estimate.