DI Council Prep, Fundraising Carousel & Gold Medal Payments | NIL Blitz: Apr. 8 - Apr. 14

Shortened today's Blitz to give you some quick-hitters as your week begins - enjoy this 5-minute-or-less read!

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1. PREVIEW: DI Council Meeting ??
2. March Madness in Review ??
3. Collective Fundraising Carousel ??
4. Money Bump for Olympic T&F ??
5. Football Portal Window ??

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1. PREVIEW: DI Council Meeting ??

I've had a chance to speak with a handful of folks close to the situation as well as get some eyes on drafted materials.

What appears to be on the table:

- Schools can give NIL pricing suggestions their SAs

- Schools can assist SAs with their NIL deals beyond simply alerting them of a deal that is present

- Schools can solicit NIL deals for their SAs

- Schools can contract third-parties (e.g., MMRs, NIL entities, etc.) exclusively to proactively assist in NIL

- Schools can be the middleman between SAs and third-parties (e.g., EA, etc.)

What hopefully gets answered:

- Can a School now tell a third-party (e.g., Collective, Brand, Opendorse, etc.) how much/who they ought to pay for NIL?

- Can a School contracted third-party (e.g., MMRs, etc.) compensate a SA directly?

- Can a School proactively assist in the development of an NIL activity?

- Can a School negotiate a deal for a SA if the SA wants them to?

- Can an event/MTE organizer contribute to a collective?

One omission which had gained (and since waned) momentum was the concept of direct school payments for NIL. Today, as with yesterday, student-athletes sign paperwork preseason which allows for their NIL to be used for non-compensated institutional purposes. There are some speculative, litigation-related reasons as to why this may be the case floating around right now.

If there is anything that the past five years in this space have taught me it is that nothing is off the table - expect the unexpected following Thursday's meeting.

2. March Madness in Review ??

If I'm giving my one-sentence takeaway from each tournament they would be as follows...

Men's Tournament: Breakout stars are a mainstay of the madness. Gohlke's name is etched into the NIL storybook with fast-action deals in the hours between first and second round games.

Women's Tournament: The investment is real. From the nationwide Epsilon deal to others yet to come, this year's excitement was not just a blip on the radar.

Congrats to the Huskies and Gamecocks on their W's! The monetary impact of their wins will keep trickling in for months to come (see a tangible view of it via Curry Brand billboards across Columbia.)

3. Collective Fundraising Carousel ??

I've taken a few analyses of fundraising efforts at various collectives and the line I hear over and over again from operators is, "we are finding out what our contributors really like".

That said, here is a quick rundown of some of the more unique offerings that appear to have piqued interest...

• Meals | Colorado's 5430 Alliance has sold out of dinner table seats with HC Deion Sanders, priced at $20,543 a pop
• Music | Georgia Southern's Eagle Nation Collective is hosting an outdoor concert this weekend headlined by supporter Cole Swindell
• Modernization | Kentucky fans seemed to like the news about freshly minted HC Mark Pope, so much so that two of them teamed up to contribute $4M to NIL efforts
• Mirroring | James Madison's Montpelier Collective is running a 'Coach for a Day' campaign to allow lucky individual(s) the chance to do just that

(Okay, those were strategically picked for alliteration but you get the point.)

4. Money Bump for Olympic T&F ??♀

Last week, World Athletics announced that it will pay out $50,000 to every gold medalist (individuals and divvied up among relay teams) at the Olympics beginning this summer. According to Sportico, this is the first time World Athletics will payout for Olympic performance directly - a payment which would traditionally come from national governing bodies.

While pay-for-play by definition and not NIL, let's play out some quick math.

Take Nathan Green , a miler and current junior at Washington. His 3:34.79 1500m makes him the fourth fastest American and fifteenth fastest in the world this season, less than two seconds from the current leader. If he, or any American for that matter, were to win gold they could expect the following...

• $50,000 - World Athletics
• $37,500 - Team USA (this is what was paid out to gold medalists in the Tokyo Games)
• ??? - Endorsement deals

Honing in on the last point, here is the latest data I can share from Green's peers in the collegiate NIL space...

• The Top 50 highest earners average around $5,600 in NIL annually
• By discipline, Hurdlers and Multi-Events have attracted the most NIL earnings, with Throwers, Distance and Sprints
• 60.3% of those deals are for social media posts

There are outliers in the data that go beyond $5K and a collegiate Olympic gold medalist would certainly garner significant attention, so there's no telling exactly how much winning it all could generate. Nonetheless, taking just Team USA payments and a high-end from the endorsement bucket still makes this World Athletics announcement a big deal for a community that largely lives smaller prize checks and brand deals to sustain their training regime.

5. Football Portal Window ??

As a friendly reminder, the spring transfer portal window for football opens tomorrow. Running from Tuesday until the end of April, this will be the first time following the granting of the preliminary injunction that football is open.

Also as a friendly reminder, current NCAA data shows that 41% of student-athletes who entered the portal did not find a new school, are still looking, transferred to a non-NCAA school, or left their sport completely.

Just because there might be green (??) on the other side doesn't mean the grass is the same color.

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Appreciate the read today!

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