Tristan Wood
Rising Spear, a company aimed at developing NIL (Name Image Likeness) opportunities for Florida State University student-athletes, announced Thursday it is merging with Warpath 850.
The merger will give student-athletes under contract with Rising Spear access to Warpath’s Dreamfield platform, a subscription service which provides behind-the-scenes access to events and meetups with student athletes. Dreamfield has been used to coordinate fan engagement events such as discord chats and local meet-and-greet events. Warpath 850’s past events have included FSU athletes such as first-round draft pick Jermaine Johnson II of the New York Jets, Amari Gainer, Skey Ekes, Camm McDonald and Dillan Gibbons.
The merger is the first consolidation between two NIL organizations focused on the same institution, said Rising Spear CEO Matthew Quigley. The addition of Dreamfield will also help Rising Spear secure relationships with enterprise-level clients by allowing corporate members to host in-person events and facilitate large-scale enterprise deals.
“This exciting merger between Rising Spear and Warpath 850 will create a strong, unified membership platform to benefit Seminole student-athletes,” Quigley said. “We look forward to welcoming all Warpath 850 subscribers with a reminder that the student-athletes receive 100% of all donations collected by Rising Spear.”
Corey Staniscia, Dreamfield’s director of external relations, said they had been working with Quigley since they launched the platform. He said the merger is historic.
“It is the first time the industry is seeing two groups that were on parallel tracks in the same town now team up in a peaceful way to further benefit the athletes at the institution,” Staniscia said. “Dreamfield’s only goal is to produce high-quality cash value commercial opportunities to as many athletes as possible in a legal, safe, and compliant manner. We look forward to continuing to accomplish this goal in Tallahassee with Rising Spear not only for fan engagement programming but also on the enterprise side of our business.”
McKenzie Milton, former FSU quarterback and Dreamfield co-founder, said the merger will boost the company’s ability to get FSU athletes more NIL deals.
“We are looking forward to working with Rising Spear to implement a program that brings as many NIL-compliant deals to each one of them through Rising Spear and Dreamfield,” Milton said.
