On Nov. 18, Brown Sports Network announced a five-month partnership with Chelsea Football Club. Throughout the spring 2026 semester, the network will look to improve the world-famous soccer team’s brand marketing strategy, online experience and content development while giving students firsthand experience in the industry.

The announcement comes alongside the network’s new strategy and marketing partnership deals with the Minnesota Vikings, an NFL team, and Boston Legacy FC — a team that will join the National Women’s Soccer League in the spring.

Brown Sports Network — which was founded this February by co-presidents Nikolas Rohrmann ’26 and Charlie Pliner ’26 — is Brown’s first and only pre-professional club dedicated to expanding student access to the sports industry. According to Rohrmann and Pliner, the club has over 400 students, 120 alums and over 40 athletic staff, in addition to the advisors from the NFL, NBA, MLS, among other sports organizations.

With the student application window for the Chelsea partnership now closed, Pliner and Rohrmann will work to compose a “project team,” or a group of students who will work with the soccer club. Once the team has been appointed, they will have a “kickoff” call with their partners at Chelsea to determine a roadmap of action.

BSN leadership will “work closely with the project lead, who’s a Brown student, to come up with a cadence of meetings with the host organization,” according to Pliner. Additionally, they will establish “how often deliverables will need to be met, and work toward doing a presentation.”

“There’s a lot of research involved, students working with other students to come up with a plan and how they’ll tackle it,” Pliner added.

Phil Lynch ’00, chief digital and marketing officer at Chelsea, facilitated the deal, Pliner said. But other members of the club’s network who are not affiliated with Brown connected the students with Boston Legacy and the Minnesota Vikings, according to Rohrmann.

The Vikings strategy and marketing project will also run through spring 2026 and specifically looks to evaluate the influence of flag football at the community level. The project will also explore the ability to expand the NFL’s influence through flag football.

For Boston Legacy, BSN students will participate in two separate projects: one focused on increasing engagement of the brand in the Boston area, and another looking at how artificial intelligence can be used to grow the club’s influence.

Rohrmann explained that the club aims to take on a diverse set of projects spanning multiple areas “so that if (students) have a particular interest, (they) can see that actually exists within the sports industry.”

“We’re trying to create something here that’s just different and shows how big the sports industry is and … why it’s a great place for students to look to start a career,” Pliner added.

Rohrmann and Pliner believe the projects create a reciprocal and beneficial relationship between the network’s members, giving students valuable experience in the industry and brands connections with young consultants “on the pulse,” Pliner said.

“For us, it’s really about just creating something that will benefit all of the different people involved,” he added.

By the end of BSN’s ongoing and upcoming partnerships, more than 70 students at Brown Sports Network will have worked with nine total organizations, building valuable connections and giving students real-world experience with some of the world’s top brands in sports, according to Pliner and Rohrmann.

“If you have tangible experience at a legit sporting organization, it’s a lot easier to land” post-graduate jobs in the industry, Rohrmann said.

Looking forward, the club hopes to “continue to build and grow the amount of projects and ultimately just create a pipeline and cohort of Brown students within the sports industry together to build a network that will benefit everybody for years, decades even, to come,” Pliner said.

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