Campus Ink and Indiana University (IU) have announced an agreement that will provide name, image, and likeness (NIL) merchandising opportunities for all IU student-athletes.

According to a press release from the school, the NIL Store powered by Campus Ink will launch a complete merchandising store for IU student-athletes, featuring officially licensed shirseys (a “shirt jersey, i.e., essentially what the replica jerseys look like but printed on standard garments) and apparel. Every athlete will also have a personalized digital locker room that will house their merchandise.

The partnership makes sense on a lot of levels. In 2021, Campus Ink officially entered the NIL space and launched its NIL Store, which serves as a merchandising solution for student-athletes and schools in general. They were able to get some traction in the space by building a platform for the University of Illinois men’s basketball players to earn money through jersey and custom apparel sales that same year.

But the connection also makes sense seeing as how Mark Cuban, who invested in Campus Ink in March of this year, is an IU alumnus. “I’m really excited that the leading NIL company, Campus Ink, and the best university on the planet, my alma mater, Indiana University, are working together,” said Cuban, who also owns  the Dallas Mavericks, in a press release. “The sky is the limit!”

“We worked directly with Indiana, and it didn’t hurt that Mark was a Hoosier,” Steven Farag, CEO and co-founder of Campus Ink, wrote in an email. The Campus Ink team handles all the creative, product creation, design, marketing, fulfillment, and customer service for its student-athletes. Additionally, the company works directly with student-athletes to educate them on merchandising, marketing, and sales trends to develop strategies for success.

“Our track record at Illinois helped make it an easy decision for Indiana and hopefully other schools,” added Farag. “This is a series of announcements that will be coming out. We felt it was only right to make the first one outside Illinois to Mark’s Alma Mater.”