(06-22-2023 12:08 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote: Pretty sure I could crank out 100+ ideas in 10 minutes, as could several others on this board, all realistic opportunities that go far beyond promoting businesses. NIL is a lot more than that. Creativity is just one aspect. There has to be legwork involved and those kinds of deals don’t get done by just anyone.
It's not that simple.
Athletes can sell their
NAME
THEIR IMAGE
THEIR LIKENESS
that's it.
Everything else, including the school's name, logos, wordmarks, uniforms and related images inluding the fact the play for said school still belongs to the school. The athletes can infer but not directly reference their school.
As you stated, the issue is the legwork, which at this point can not be done by anyone employed by the school. The players, as a whole, are not willing to put in the effort and/or time to find NIL opportunities for themselves. So right now we have school specific collectives to provide the "legwork". They are not the long term solution and in my opinion won't exist for more than a year or two or five. The IRS just yanked the rug out from under all the collectives that were attempting to portray themselves as charitable 501 ©3 entities. "Donations" to such collectives are no longer to be considered tax-deductible. Thus there is no longer any incentive for a business to lean to the NIL world over direct contributions to a university and/or its projects.
These collectives could attempt to rebrand as 501 ©7 "social clubs" with "membership dues" providing "members" with incentives such as exclusive items and/or events." BUT at that point they will be in direct competition with a school's booster club or clubs. And universities don't like direct competition with their fund-raising entities.
I don't know where the solution is, but we're not there at this point. Most NIL deals are not returing near the investment at this point. Most college kids just don't have the selling power to demand the "big bucks". This initial NIL bubble is going to burst pretty quickly. Businesses won't continue to throw in good money after bad.
Personally, I think the better long term idea is to allow the schools and their memorabilia partners to sell items with specific players names and images through their licensing deals and share the money generated from those sales with the athletes. UAT is currently skirting this rule by allowing its collective to operate a store within the football stadium selling these types of items.
Anything outside of that should be up to the athletes and their personal marketing agents.