The Pants Patreon is Live

June is here and with the official kickoff to summer, we’re also kicking off our launch on Patreon. You’ll recall from our earlier announcement, this new venture changes absolutely nothing about the existing Black Heart Gold Pants. There will be no paywall going up for content, no stripping away of the work done here or anything of that nature.

Rather, the new efforts are simply a way for The Pants to create an avenue into NIL via the Swarm. As you’ll recall, the Swarm is Iowa’s NIL collective with two separate arms. The first is the collective in a traditional sense, where people such as yourselves can donate a monthly amount that gets thrown into the pot and distributed to football, men’s and women’s basketball players who choose to participate in community service work coordinated by Swarm. Those contributions by fans cannot be directed to any one sport or player and are split evenly among the athletes who participate. Because the contributions are given to athletes doing community service and nothing is received in return, contributions to the collective are tax deductible.

The other side of Swarm is designed in a more pure NIL fashion. It coordinates partnerships between businesses and Iowa athletes whereby companies pay for the use of players’ name, image and likeness. This is the example of a local car dealership giving a lease to a football player in exchange for the player signing some autographs at the dealership, or shooting a quick commercial. Or perhaps more accurately in today’s world, the football players are likely to run some social media posts promoting the dealership.

That’s where this new Patreon venture fits in. It’s an avenue for fans to pool contributions to the Swarm to be targeting specifically toward one sport or athlete in exchange for gaining access to that athlete via BHGP. Ideally, this would not be limited to one player and we would be able to provide benefits to multiple athletes across multiple sports in exchange for said athletes doing interviews, Q&As, AMAs and the like.

Put more simply, this is your chance to be a bag man. Legally, of course.

To start out, we’re launching with three membership tiers starting as low as $5 per month - that’s a lower access point than the lowest collective membership. Obviously, this is brand new and we’re looking for feedback so let us know in the comments.

You can also let us know your thoughts on our new Discord server, which all Patreon subscribers will gain access to (hint - there’s a 7-day free trial). The Discord will provide direct access to the staff at all hours in real time, including a more behind-the-scenes look at our thoughts, daily news and what we’re looking at writing. As with the Patreon itself, your input on story ideas, content needs or coverage ideas are welcome and encouraged.

So that’s it! We’d love to have you join us in supporting Iowa athletics via the Swarm. No pressure and no changes here if you don’t, but hopefully a value-added opportunity for fans to give money to Iowa athletes, help the Hawkeye teams most important to them and get a little something in return.

Join our Patreon here!