A Note From

Craig Angelos

I’ve spent more than three decades inside Division I athletics. As an Athletic Director, Deputy AD, and senior operator across multiple programs, I’ve been responsible for revenue, facilities, conference positioning, and institutional strategy under very different competitive conditions.

My background also includes legal training, which has shaped how I evaluate governance structures, contractual alignment, and institutional risk under changing conditions.

What has changed in the last few years is not incremental. The underlying economics of college athletics have shifted. NIL markets, conference realignment, media fragmentation, and now the introduction of external capital are converging into something fundamentally different from the system most athletic departments were built to operate within.

• ticketing

• fundraising

• sponsorship

• NIL activity

Most programs are still organized around:

as separate functions.

But revenue no longer emerges from those functions independently. It emerges from how they are structured together. That distinction is now material.

What has also changed is the ability to evaluate those systems before decisions are made. Historically, most athletic departments have had to rely on:

• where revenue is structurally constrained

• how institutional systems interact (or fail to)

• what current operating models make impossible

The work is grounded in experience inside athletic departments—but extends beyond it. That combination is what allows us to evaluate the system as it exists today—and as it is evolving.

ARC9 Labs addresses that gap. Not to operate athletic departments. Not to provide traditional consulting.But to make visible what is otherwise difficult to see from inside the system:

• retrospective reporting

• partial benchmarking

• fragmented internal data

Today, it is possible to evaluate how institutional systems behave under different conditions—before capital is deployed, before structures are changed, and before outcomes become irreversible. That capability did not previously exist in a practical form within collegiate athletics.

Founder

ARC9 Labs

ARC9 Labs

ARC9 Labs is an institutional advisory group focused on the economic structure of collegiate athletics.

The firm provides:

• institutional intelligence

• revenue architecture analysis

• structural positioning under NIL and capital-era conditions

ARC9 engagements are analytical, not operational.

We provide clarity at the level required for executive decision-making.

Our work focuses on how revenue systems behave under changing conditions—across ticketing, sponsorship, NIL, fan engagement, and emerging capital structures—and how those systems can be evaluated before decisions are made.

ARC9 Labs operates with access to a broader applied intelligence framework through its relationship with Forlytica Applied.

It operates with access to a broader applied intelligence framework through its relationship with Forlytica Applied.

Analytical Foundation

ARC9 Labs operates as a licensee of Forlytica Applied, the commercial arm of the Forlytica Research Group. This relationship allows ARC9 to apply select analytical outputs and structural modeling frameworks developed through independent research in:

• institutional systems

• economic architecture

• multi-variable decision environments

These frameworks are adapted specifically to the conditions of collegiate athletics. They allow for structured evaluation of institutional systems under multiple potential conditions, without requiring direct operational intervention.

Institutional Perspective

ARC9’s work is informed by direct experience across Division I athletics, including leadership roles at:

• Florida Atlantic University (Athletic Director)

• University of Hawaii (Athletic Director)

• Temple University

• Indiana University

• University of Miami

and additional senior roles spanning revenue, operations, and conference-level engagement. This experience is not presented as a credential.

It defines the vantage point from which the work is conducted.

Operating Position

In most athletic departments, revenue performance is evaluated.
In very few, revenue structure is fully understood.

ARC9 exists to close that gap—before strategic decisions are made.

Most of the system still looks familiar.
The way it behaves is not.