Big Red Fan Club becomes first player-led NIL group at Nebraska

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – If you’ve been on social media this month, you may have seen some Husker football players tweeting about the Big Red Fan Club.

It’s the newest way for Husker athletes to interact with fans, able thanks to the ever-changing name, image and likeness landscape.

Co-founder Zach Molzer says the club will allow fans and players to interact “on a level like never before” while providing athletes with NIL compensation.

“Big Red Fan Club exists to bridge the gap between players and fans here at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,” Molzer said.

Nebraska football players wanted a way to interact with fans on a closer level, so some players approached co-founders Molzer and Rob Khorram, both senior business students at UNL, with their idea.

Molzer and Khorram also had walk-on receiver Elliot Brown’s help.

Brown shared the idea with his teammates and helped lay the foundation as his dad owns GSD 14 Events, an event company.

They’ve been working on the idea for the past five months and now have 24 football players signed up to be a part of the player-led Big Red Fan Club.

Big Red Fan Club players.

“We kind of have that background on to how to make things happen, you know, make their idea come to fruition, Molzer said. “Rob and I are just kind of the back-end support, and this is purely, you know, player focused, player led.”

Molzer says it’s all about giving back to the community and strengthening the foundation of Nebraska athletics.

“The Big Red Fan Club is, is there to provide these athletes compensation, you know, within NIL, while also providing the fans with an experience like they haven’t seen before,” he said.

The early ideas include meet and greets, dinners with players, birthday party appearances, raffles, giveaways and exclusive player-generated content like Q&As and fan videos.

The Big Red Fan Club sells FanPasses, which allows entry into in-person events and access to exclusive player content from the Nebraska Football Players.

Molzer said the Nebraska fan base was the perfect group to start this with because “our fans are the best.”

“It’s all between giving back to the community and strengthening the foundation that is Nebraska,” he said. “NIL is a big space in general …. the great part about having such a rabid fan base is that no matter what happens on, off the field, these fans are always gonna support the players, and the players are always gonna want to give back to the fans.”

The Big Red Fan Club is initially working with only football but could expand to all sports in the future.

Currently, there is a wait list of around 2,000 people, and the club is only accepting 5,000 total members.

It plans on launching by the start of the football season.

You can visit its website for more information and to get on the wait list.