American DJ Jonas Blue is scheduled to play set in Las Vegas and Amsterdam this fall—and in between those shows, he’ll do in Durham, N. C., during a Duke basketball game.
One of the six artists the Blue Devils are hosting this time in a new area of Wallace Wade Stadium, which aims to create a tailgating environment inside the 95-year-old place is Blue, who has nearly 18 million monthly Spotify audiences. The renovations are a part of a larger effort to increase stadium attendance and strengthen the school’s football brand at a dangerous time for every athletic department that has to rely on gridiron success.
Rachel DeMita, a creator of content, has also been added to Duke’s roster. She’ll host the in-venue videoboard for each home game and spread the word about the program online, including her one million Instagram followers ( more than six times what @dukefootball can boast ), in a dual capacity similar to the one she’s currently holding for the Big3 basketball league.
” It’s a new venture for us, collaborating with an outside personality”, Duke Athletics executive director of marketing Chris Alston said. ” We got challenged by our athletic director, Nina King, to really think outside the box”. He continued, noting that he’s already heard from curious college and professional sports marketing and gameday production counterparts. ” We’re on the front end of this”, Alston said.
Coach Mike Elko helped turn around the Duke football program on the field, winning back-to-back bowl games in 2022 and ‘ 23 for just the second time in school history. But Texas A&, M lured him away with a$ 42 million contract offer this offseason. In December, Duke hired former Miami head coach Manny Diaz and assistant coach Manny Diaz to replace Elko, and the school soon hired consultants from WME to assist with the program’s off-field development.
In 2022, King said,” We need to do well in football so that we can have a seat at the table and really be a part of meaningful conversations about the ACC.” ” We’re investing more, as we should be”.
Despite recent victories, Duke ranked last in the ACC in terms of football attendance in 2023, with a stadium that was frequently at least a third empty. With the ACC joining California and Stanford this year, two of the smallest draws in the Pac-12 last year, along with Washington State and Oregon State, Blue Devil leadership does n’t have to look far to see the potential cost of failing to keep up with their peers in terms of pigskin popularity.
Duke’s financials are n’t publicly available, but the details at neighboring UNC clarify the situation. Even as the Tar Heels reached the NCAA men’s basketball championship game in 2021-22, the football program brought in roughly half of the athletic department’s overall revenues, and nearly 75 % more than the men’s hoops squad.
One year into her tenure, King said,” We talk a lot about football and how significant football is. ” We need it to be good to drive revenue, so that we can put those resources into our 26 other sports”.
With an undergraduate enrollment below 7, 000 and a far-flung alumni population, Duke must target non-partisan locals to help fill Wallace Wade—and that means thinking like a pro team.
The school is putting forth new messaging and branding that appeals to nearby residents. The new” Devils Deck” construction above the north end zone came with a roughly 13 % drop in total seating inside the stadium, following a trend set by NFL franchises. The DJ concept, meanwhile, borrows from NBA arenas. The biggest name will play homecoming weekend with each home game, with a different musician playing each one. According to renderings shared with Sportico, they’ll be performing within a new booth called Devils Advocate. Elon ( Aug. 30 ): DJ Glory
UConn ( Sep. 14 ): DJ Yona
UNC ( Sep. 28 ): Jonas Blue
Florida State ( Oct. 18 ): Lost Kings
SMU ( Oct. 26 ): Angelo the Kid
Virginia Tech ( Nov. 23 ): DJ Fannie Mae
” You’ve probably seen in the professional sports landscape over the past ten years… using third-party IP or really leveraging the influence that social media has to elevate brands,” said WME Sports partner and EVP, Endeavor global sports partnerships Mike Zavodsky. There is a natural transition from the way professional sports leagues have focused on doing it in the collegiate space for the past ten years as college athletics transitions into the current state it’s in and considers monetization and brand in a different way.
Zavodsky, who has led WME’s efforts to promote Duke’s branding evolution, said he does n’t think DeMita will be the most recent social maven hired to help a university get its message across to digital native audiences. Prior to joining WME in 2022, he also has experience from the world of professional sports, having previously led the teams that included the Brooklyn Nets and Detroit Pistons.
” Some of these programs, as you look around the country, are as big, if not bigger, than some pro programs”, Zavodsky said. They are bridging the gap between what was the college experience and what was the professional experience, to just be one in the same.
They’re already playing a similar tune.