In college sports, only athletes can get Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals. And many athletes are making millions from these NIL deals. But at Fanatics, we believe in the fans. And while fans can’t play football on the field, there was one arena where fans are college athletes, too: in EA Sports College Football ‘25 video game. More than 5 million fans were playing the game and creating themselves as virtual athletes. So we found a way to get fans in on the NIL action. We gave the first ever real NIL deals to virtual athletes. Players created by fans, now signed by Fanatics. Fans first experienced the campaign on streaming superstar Sketch’s Twitch channel. Sketch had been streaming with his own virtual athlete, Sari Fercussin, who had become popular with his followers. We chose to launch the campaign by giving the first NIL deal to Sari, leaning into a character fans already knew and loved. Then, we created an integrated marketing campaign around Sari, as if he were a real world star. We made him his own jersey, 1/1 Topps trading card, digital commercial, and even a billboard that ran in his player’s college town. The campaign elements were shared on Sketch’s and Fanatic’s social media channels & fans were asked to submit their virtual athlete’s highlights for a chance to get an NIL deal of their own. In the end, we awarded six virtual athlete NIL deals in total. The campaign gave ~5M virtual athletes NIL opportunities. It attracted 2M new fans to Fanatics on social media, including about 1.8M who didn’t follow Fanatics before the campaign. We also turned virtual athletes into legit stars. When our first virtual athlete’s trading card was announced, fans started bartering for it with some offering more than $5,000 for it.