Alma Mater, Inc.

Picture this: it’s a crisp October morning, and you and your wife just arrived at the airport in White Plains, New York. It’s game day for your alma mater, and you’re doing it in style.

“Airport” undersold it — it’s an FBO. And you’re not taking Wheels Up, NetJets, or Airshare. You each have $3,995 seats on a Gameday Jet (a Bombardier CRJ 200, to be specific). You take your seats in the spacious cabin alongside 14 other die-hard and deep-pocketed Wolverine fans. The pilot lets everyone know that the trip to Ann Arbor will be 1 hour and 45 minutes, and that you’ll be taking off shortly.

“Enjoy this, honey,” you say with a happy sigh. "This is how we do our part to secure us that class of 2028 5-Star defensive tackle.”

You deplane. Ground transport is waiting, and it takes you straight to your newly purchased ALUM residence. The bellman takes your bags up to your unit, and you head straight for the members-only lounge on the first floor to grab some drinks and bites at the bar. You’ll head to the tailgate in an hour, and kickoff is at 3:30. Life is good.

This is what immersive fandom looks like for affluent alumni these days. These two businesses, Gameday Jets and ALUM, are case in point of this new reality – more on them later. These companies sit at the convergence of three key shifts. Two are structural: the upheaval in college athletics and the K-shaped economy. The third is a megatrend I've covered in the past, the rise of identity-driven affinity groups.

The upper end of the consumer market is spending more than ever on experiences that affirm who they are, and they’re increasingly indifferent to price when identity is on the line. The cohort that has the capacity for $15k day-trips and a second (or third, or fourth) home in a college town is concentrated, but it’s bigger than you’d think.

I’ve written before that sports has a distinct advantage over every other category because fans bring more passion than any other consumer base. It’s personal, generational, and core to who they are. When it comes to supporting one’s college team and returning to the campus where they spent some of their most formative years, it’s visceral.

Back to these two businesses. Remember the part in our hypothetical earlier where you were telling your wife about that 5-star recruit you were helping land? I’ll explain.

As a concept, Gameday Jets is brilliant because it aligns incentives. Founded in 2025 by Wheels Up alum Luis Garcia, it calls itself “the first private travel community built for college sports fans.” Members can book private charters, share flights, or purchase individual seats on same-day roundtrip “Shuttles” to select games.

Most importantly, they partner directly with athletic departments, routing membership, flight, and related spend back to the school as a revenue share, with athlete NIL funded through the "Game Day Impact Fund." The school becomes a counterparty in the hospitality stack. The fan flies private and funds the roster in the same transaction.

The rev share explains why the wealthy fan books with them over a competitor. The cabin explains why they book again. Direct, comfortable travel with fourteen people who care about the team just as much.

ALUM is what happens when someone pays attention to the demands of that fan. College towns have never had the infrastructure to serve people who want more and will pay top dollar for it.

Officially launched on August 4, ALUM is how you can live inside your fandom. It’s a Derek Jeter-backed luxury hospitality company building private members' clubs and condo-hotels in America's top college towns, where buying a unit comes with Clubhouse membership and every visit is designed to feel like a homecoming. Its first property is a 116,000-square-foot development in Tuscaloosa, it has a site already secured at Oregon, and ‘Coming soon’ pages for Michigan, College Station, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, and Notre Dame.

They have plans to scale to 30 to 40 locations, and a partnership that should help them do it. They’ve linked up with Legends (which was started nearly 20 years ago as a joint venture between the Yankees and Jerry Jones) to run the clubs and, in ALUM’s own words, to drive relationships with university and athletic leadership across markets. Expect this to be a strong channel — Legends has partnered with over 90% of Power Four university athletic departments in the last 15 years.

Capital now sees college towns as year-round markets, not six Saturdays. Dollars are increasingly flowing to the development of mixed-use districts centered around stadiums where fans can go for concerts, festivals, and shopping.

My friend Matthew Jester nailed it in a post he made a few months ago:

College fandom is being productized into a luxury lifestyle category. The fan spends at every layer, and the game itself is simply the anchor.