Last weekend, Dallas Mavericks owner and Campus Ink investor Mark Cuban pulled quite the fast one on Michigan fans.
Just minutes before the Michigan vs. Indiana basketball game, the FOX Big Noon Kickoff pregame played a video of Cuban telling Michigan fans to visit “GoBlue.com.”
The prank? GobBlue.com diverted directly to the Indiana NIL Store.
A proud IU grad, Cuban had previously purchased the web domain for GoBlue.com and picked the perfect moment to unveil the surprise.
🤳 @mcuban gives @IndianaFootball a shoutout before they take on Michigan!
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) October 8, 2022
...And a little present for Wolverine fans 😂 pic.twitter.com/o6eodkChB0
In a span of 15 minutes following Cuban’s video, the Indiana NIL Store had more than 30,000 people visit the website.
It was a stroke of marketing genius from Cuban, who has been known to make waves throughout his impressive career.
Sports should be fun 😂@mcuban pic.twitter.com/bv4JAlgcwH
— The NIL Store (@nil_store) October 13, 2022
NIL Store Capitalizes!
The NIL store team had a bit of advance notice, and fully understood there would be a ton of new visitors to the website.
So, naturally we had some fun with the new visitors and made a pop-up page leaning into the joke.
.@mcuban bought https://t.co/SsNv8V0AQ6 and redirected it to the IU NIL Store 😂 pic.twitter.com/wR5IQkkhnt
— Avi Zaleon (@avi_zaleon) October 8, 2022
It was a perfect way to capitalize on the new visitors and, hopefully, make them laugh a bit.
To sweeten the pot, we even added a 10-percent discount for all of the first-time Indiana fans and any new folks who were just discovering the NIL Store.
At the end of the day, sports should be fun.