This article is part of a series about private equity and college athletics. Part 1 can be read here.
Last September, HERO Sports reported FCS Commissioners heard a pitch in Chicago from an outside group looking to invest in and help operate the FCS Playoffs outside of the NCAA umbrella.
Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports reported that group was Sequence Equity.
I had a chance to ask Sequence Equity venture partner Jason Belzer if the firm’s offer to play a role in the future of the FCS Playoffs still stands, and his answer was direct.
“The offer is still on the table,” Belzer said.
It was a simple answer, but one that speaks to a much larger moment in college athletics.
At the FBS level, billions of dollars are tied to football, media rights, conference realignment, postseason access, and private capital conversations. But at the FCS level, where some of the best brands in college football still exist, the postseason continues to operate in a system many athletic directors, privately and publicly, believe is undervalued, under-monetized, and increasingly difficult to defend financially.
The basic premise was not complicated, especially for any warm-blooded fan of FCS football: there is real value in the property, and the asset’s ceiling is nowhere near capacity. Many beyond PE firms believe the FCS Playoffs are an undervalued sports property with proven metrics, strong brands, postseason tradition, and television audiences that suggest additional revenue is possible.
The 2025 FCS quarterfinals were the most-viewed since 2011. The semifinals were the most-viewed since 2009, highlighted by the Montana-Montana State game delivering an FCS playoff record TV viewership of 2.8 million. The championship game drew its third-highest viewership ever, with 2.3 million. The playoffs and the game itself are growing.
Yet the current FCS playoff rights are bundled with other NCAA championships in a $115 million annual ESPN package. Sequence Equity believes, with data to back it up, that schools are losing value by not selling FCS football separately.
“It’s apparent that the FCS playoff is extremely undervalued,” Belzer said. “And revenue pales in comparison to what it could become in the future.”
The current system also creates frustration for athletic departments. FCS schools have to bid to host playoff games, then return around 85% of ticket revenue back to the NCAA. For programs already operating on extremely tight margins, this creates a postseason model in which winning can feel more like a financial burden than a reward.
There has been plenty of noise in the industry about the “loss” or even “punishment” for winning in the FCS Playoffs.
Belzer sees that as part of a larger structural issue.
According to Belzer, 128 of the 129 FCS football programs are losing money on football.
“If you look at the numbers, they are all operating at a loss, and it’s not even close,” Belzer said. “The one revenue-producing sport that you would think, in football, literally, there’s only one that makes money, and that’s North Dakota State.”
… and North Dakota State is leaving to play in the Mountain West later this fall.
That reality is part of why Belzer believes the FCS, and, to an extent, the NCAA, has to think differently. A stronger TV deal, more sponsorship opportunities, and other ways to maximize revenue are all possibilities under a more efficient commercialized model. A financially incentivized FCS playoff system could also stabilize realignment, make the subdivision more attractive, and reward teams for investing in FCS football.
Like the FBS College Football Playoff LLC, the model would place more control in the hands of conferences, while private investors inject millions of dollars and assets into the property.
That overnight could be a game-changer for most FCS playoff institutions. It is also why Belzer says the concept needs to be understood correctly.
“There are constraints that exist around the FCS playoffs because of the deals that the NCAA entered into with CBS and ESPN,” Belzer said. “The NCAA would have to wait for those agreements to expire to be able to monetize the event to the levels we believe are possible.”
That does not mean Sequence Equity has walked away from the idea.
“Every day that goes by, we get closer to the expiration of those contracts,” Belzer said. “But the more time that goes by without investment, the less the platform and asset is ultimately worth.”
For now, Belzer said Sequence Equity is having individual conversations with conferences about investments into conferences as a whole, with the idea that whatever the future postseason structure looks like, whether it stays under the NCAA or becomes something else, the conferences can work together in a more coordinated way.
He is also careful to say this is not some breakaway plot designed to destroy the NCAA.
“We have and will continue to keep the NCAA involved,” Belzer said. “This is not about creating a new NCAA. This is helping it – and its member institutions – operate in this new era.”
The NCAA is often the easiest target in college athletics, but Belzer believes the real issue is not simply the association itself. It is the one-size-fits-all model in a landscape where one school may operate with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue while another operates with a fraction of that.
That is especially true at the FCS and Group of Six level, where schools are now being asked to fund revenue sharing, compete in NIL, retain coaches, improve facilities, invest in ticketing, sponsorships, data, and multimedia, while still working through state systems, campus bureaucracy, and higher education processes that were not designed for modern sports business.
Belzer believes private capital can help remove some of those roadblocks.
“If I want to hire a salesperson, I don’t want to put it on some job board and wait 30 to 60 days,” Belzer said. “I want to put it out, interview, and have somebody hired in a week or two. Preferably, I want that person working on commission, because it means they’ll be motivated to sell more. That’s how it works in pro sports. Can’t do that in college sports.”
For some FCS schools, traction with private equity is gaining momentum.
Belzer does not believe every school has to take private capital. But he does believe schools have to change the way they operate.
“If an institution at the Group of Six or FCS level is not willing to go outside the box right now and change the way they operate their business into a more revenue forward model, they will functionally be a Division III program within 10 years,” Belzer said.
That may sound direct, but Belzer realizes it might be too late for some schools.
In his view, the future FCS model should not be built around simply asking for more student fees, more institutional support, or more donor money. That model gets harder every year as campuses deal with enrollment pressure, donor fatigue, and the rising costs of Division I athletics.
Instead, Belzer believes FCS schools need real commercial infrastructure.
That could mean a stronger playoff model. It could mean a separate commercialized entity. It could mean better sponsorship sales, better media packaging, better data strategy, or more sophisticated NIL and athlete contract structures.
The point is not just to generate money for investors. The point, Belzer argues, is to help schools build a business that can actually sustain itself.
“Our goal is how do we help these institutions and ultimately help preserve the student-athlete experience and augment the student-athlete experience,” Belzer said.
