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?
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.