The Guise of Amateurism and the Convenient Narrative

While our skill sets vary drastically, we all play. We cheer for our teammates, friends, family, and teams throughout every league, level, and skill group. We admire those that effortlessly run, jump, throw, catch, kick, and swim. We look for evidence of human excellence, and we celebrate athletic exceptionalism at every level of sport.

There is something magical and intoxicating when someone performs an athletic feat at the absolute peak of human capabilities. And for those that compete at the most competitive levels, they hold a unique social and cultural capital that enables them - especially in recent years - to capitalize financially from their skills.

Yet when we think about our modern sports history, we find a tale of young people selling out stadiums for their athletic feats only to receive none of those earnings. In fact, for decades the explicit policy of the NCAA was a nonpermissible clause stating, “After becoming a student-athlete, an individual shall not be eligible for participation in intercollegiate athletics if the individual: accepts any remuneration for or permits the use of his or her name or picture to advertise, recommend or promote directly the sale or use of a commercial product or service of any kind; or receives remuneration for endorsing a commercial product or service through the individual’s use of such product or service.”(1)

Billions upon billions of dollars generated and for generations, not a cent was shared with those performing on the field. Under the guise of the “purity of amateurism” that nonpermissible justification was used by those profiting most from the system to extoll the virtue of playing exclusively for the love of the game in order to avoid having to pay those who played the game. And until recently, they convinced the public of the same by claiming that advocates of fair compensation of college athletes were destroying the sanctity of sport. It's convenient that this narrative only safeguarded the powerful few’s revenue streams. 

Now, we are truly in a new era. There are life-changing opportunities for young people due to NIL. It's about time we created the tools and means for athletes to access those opportunities. That is our mission at Dealiyo: for every athlete - just like every great artist or craftsman or musician or beyond - deserves to be compensated for their excellence.

(1)  https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2020/05/ncaa-moves-closer-to-nil-policy-for-student-athletes

Where is NIL heading? What will change and what will continue to grow in the NIL landscape?

Since 2021, NIL has grown into a $1 billion industry. Within the next five years, NIL is expected to reach $5 billion. The growth of the industry is fast and furious but the regulations and structure around NIL continue to lack a clear direction. In this chaotic landscape, we see dire headlines, and occasionally, we get a story like UNLV quarterback Matthew Sluka that opens the floodgates of dialogue around NIL reform and guardrails.

There is no doubt that the NCAA and legislators will establish regulations that begin to rein in the chaos that has engulfed the industry. Uncertainty is and will be a constant in NIL. However, Just because the industry is evolving, does not mean that it is going away. So that begs the question: where is NIL heading, what will change, and what will continue to grow in the NIL landscape? 

Matthew Sluka is one of many players who has been taken advantage of by the vague-ness of NIL policy. Nefarious actors are prevalent in NIL - making false promises and misrepresenting the truth behind resources available to players. These actors, both individuals and entities, that exist to identify and pass along capital to players or recruits will face necessary scrutiny and attention in the coming years. There will be a crackdown on how funding is promised, delivered, and reported from these entities/individuals to athletes. Where does that leave NIL?

The area of NIL that will be resilient in the coming years, free from a majority of uncertainties of regulatory changes, will be athletes independently making contracts with brands/businesses. True name, image, and likeness work constitutes an athlete’s payment for marketing from a brand or business. Athletes, just like creators, models, and influencers, will continue to be able to exchange their name, image, and likeness within clear marketing deals. This is no different from an independent marketing agreement made between business and individual.

We are seeing evidence of this in the courts outside of the NCAA where judges are ruling that high school athletes like Faizon Brandon from North Carolina can make NIL deals prior to entering college without jeopardizing their future eligibility. This kind of ruling continues to push a needed and necessary narrative in the world of sports: antiquated policies of amateurism in sports only limit personal financial freedoms. 

NIL is helping reverse this trend. While certain elements of the NIL landscape will surely change, brand work with athletes will only expand and will expand rapidly. Athletes are creators and most college athletes are micro influencers with dedicated followings. As we look at the larger picture, micro influencer marketing will be a $30B industry by 2030, and athletes are the single most effective brand ambassadors for micro influencing marketing spend (athletes see a 1.3x user engagement for micro influencing deals compared to non-athlete influencers). 

This is where Dealiyo is positioned to help lead the charge. At Dealiyo, we are empowering athletes to work directly with businesses to create those micro influencing deals. We are laser focused on the resilient part of the NIL market, and we are eliminating the major pain point of business and athlete deals to-date. That is a sustainable business model and an approach for long-term success.

Sources:

• https://www.paymentlabs.io/blog/compliance-security/amateur-athletes-enter-the-marketplace#:~:text=The%20NCAA%20legalized%20NIL%20payments,and%20wide%20for%20local%20athletes

• https://apnews.com/article/unlv-sluka-what-happened-5237f0dba1c523d2d0e74523c7f64a4e

• https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/ncaa-athletes-left-exposed-as-efforts-to-tighten-nil-rules-stall

• https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/jaden-rashada-florida-nil-lawsuit-ee2f5441?st=n5d25fa08sa93ut&reflink=article_copyURL_share

• https://apnews.com/article/nil-lawsuit-north-carolina-faizon-brandon-ad3214a5f4298b27858a50284364e19d

• https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-statistics/

Locker Room Access: What's the latest on NIL and its impact on UVA Basketball?

Listen to the Locker Room Access podcast with Dealiyo's Head of Growth, Tien-Wei Huang, talk about NIL and its impact on basketball programs!

Ed O'Bannon's Fight for Student Athletes Paves the Way for NIL Deals

The fight for student athletes: a legacy, a legend, and a future of promise. Ed O’Bannon leads the way for the next generation of NCAA athletes.

Ed O’Bannon has been showered in confetti. He’s raised banners and trophies. He’s considered one of the greatest NCAA men’s basketball players of all time, and on top of all that, he’s also set the standard for advocacy and fairness in college athletics.
For decades, the attention paid to college athletics has been fixated on the play on the field. Fans and audiences marveled at the incredible feats of athleticism, teamwork, and human excellence. What was hidden from all of us was what was happening off the field, at the boardroom table. There, millions and millions of dollars was allocated, exchanged, and paid between the controlling parties with the NCAA overseeing - and profiting - tremendously. Student athletes, the ones putting in the hard work day in and day out, didn’t see a dime.

15 years ago, Ed saw himself portrayed in an NCAA licensed video game without his consent or any compensation. In response, he did the one thing that many thought was unimaginable - he challenged the system. Ed’s court case is now well known; he took the NCAA to court, won that case, and ushered in a new era of college athletics, an era that has enabled and brought about what we all refer to now as NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness). Ed’s case and his bravery to challenge what was fundamentally wrong with how the NCAA treated its student athletes has resulted in young people nationwide having the opportunity to make money and set themselves up for financial success and security…sometimes for life.

The impact of such a change is hard to accurately encapsulate. Student athletes, whether they are able to pursue professional careers or not, can now pay down student loans, buy themselves new gear, support a family member, or even save money for their financial future. In the media, we hear about the big deals inked by Caitlin Clark, Caleb Williams, and Travis Hunter through NIL, but where Ed’s legacy will be felt most immediately and forever will be the increased number of small dollar opportunities that are now available to every NCAA athlete.

When Ed and his brother, Charles O’Bannon, and I met for coffee in March, we talked about what I call the 95% - the athletes that don’t receive the big money offers, the spotlight, or media attention. It's these 95%ers that are looking to make $200, $300, $400 every other month through NIL opportunities. We talked about how the system was not set up for Collectives and agencies to be incentivized to help these 95%ers get smaller dollar deals. We also talked about how NIL was failing the most vulnerable and the most significant number of NCAA athletes. And finally, we talked about how Dealiyo was meeting the needs of the 95%ers.

Dealiyo is on a mission to help every student athlete access brand opportunities with a secure legal and financial support platform…free of charge. It's a thrill and truly an honor to have Ed and Charles as Dealiyo Advisors. With Dealiyo, Ed is continuing his work to help every athlete - not just superstars - achieve financial freedom while getting their education.

Read more about Ed’s incredible story in the recent Sportico article here.

The Wild & Chaotic NIL Landscape

The liberation of college athletics to NIL deals presents student's with ample opportunity… and risks

The world of name, image, and likeness (NIL) has opened up massive opportunities for college athletes. Headlines scream about mega-deals for star quarterbacks and generational basketball talents, but the vast majority of athletes are left wandering the confusing maze with little to no guidance. This lack of a structure leaves athletes vulnerable to exploitation and potential scams.
The current NIL free-for-all is a scammer's paradise. Unprepared athletes get promised too-good-to-be-true offers with contracts scribbled on napkins (or even more frequently, Instagram DMs), if they’re written down at all; they’re pressured into signing exploitive contracts without understanding the impact key details of the agreement can have on their future intellectual property or content; or in the worst case scenarios, as detailed extensively in a recent Bloomberg feature, students are finding themselves the targets of outrageous exploitive behavior to criminal scams.

Dealiyo: The NIL Deal Platform
At Dealiyo, this is exactly what we set out to fix. We're here to be all NCAA athletes’ trusted platform to negotiate NIL deals. We don't just point you towards sponsors; we show you how to negotiate like a pro, backed by lawyers with experience and *gasp* integrity (seriously, they’re great people).
Here's how Dealiyo protects college athletes:

• Structured Process: Dealiyo streamlines the NIL deal making process, ensuring athletes understand each step and their rights throughout the negotiation.

• Guardrails for Protection: We provide essential safeguards to ensure NIL deals are fair and beneficial to the athlete's interests.

• Effective Deal Flow Management: Dealiyo empowers athletes to efficiently manage potential sponsorships and communication, maximizing their value.

Dealiyo doesn't just whip together deals. We empower athletes to take control of their NIL future. We believe informed athletes are successful athletes. With Dealiyo by your side, you can focus on perfecting your game, not parsing legalese. So get in the game. Let's make the NIL landscape a place where everyone wins.

Dealiyo. Enabling Access for Every Student Athlete and Small Business to NIL Opportunities

Record deals between big brands and NCAA athletes are changing the face of college athletics, but how do we ensure that all NCAA athletes and small and local businesses have opportunities to market and monetize in the NIL landscape? Dealiyo.

$350. That was the rent for my room in a shared house in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2014. Granted, the house had seen better days after being home to a group of 10 or so 21 year old boys for decades. There were rats in the walls, and the basement was something out of a M Night Shyamalan movie. That being said, $350 a month was the price for the roof over my head.
While rent prices fluctuate dramatically from college to college and market to market, I remember thinking about that $350 and the other unique costs for college students - meal plans, books, club fees, and of course, loans. All of these leave out the even greater costs incurred by our student athletes, especially if they’re not on scholarship.  

It is easy to forget how far $200, $300 or $400 goes for a college student. For some, $200 could be extra spending money for a new pair of cleats in some of our less well funded sports programs. For others, an extra $200 could mean making a loan payment, making rent for the month, or sending some money home to family.

When Ed O’Bannon prevailed as the lead plaintiff in the 2015 US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit against the NCAA, he paved the way for NCAA athletes to be compensated for the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Since that landmark ruling and the subsequent NIL policies, thousands of NCAA athletes have worked with businesses and brands to make money while in school. Yet there are many thousands more NCAA athletes who are being left behind by the NIL system.

In an article in Sports Business Journal, Bill Carter states that as of 2023, only 17 percent of Division I NCAA athletes participated in NIL. That leaves the other 83 percent of athletes either not pursuing NIL money or lacking deal flow/NIL marketing opportunities from businesses. This then raises the question - if NIL is expected to be at least a $5B industry by 2029, how are we going to expand the exchange and flow of deal opportunities to more student athletes and how are we going to grow the number of small and medium businesses who are looking to make small dollar NIL deals in the marketplace?

This question inspired us to build and launch Dealiyo - the first dynamic and automated platform for athletes and businesses to actively negotiate and fulfill NIL deals via customized legal agreements. Sure, there are plenty of tools out there for athletes and collectives, but what’s missing is a tool that ensures safety and eliminates risk for both student athletes and businesses by creating non predatory, unbiased legal agreements from agreed upon terms.

That’s why our goal is to get every student athlete the opportunity to find and make NIL money while they are in school. We started Dealiyo with the mission to help every student athlete access NIL opportunities with a secure legal and financial support platform free of charge. We’re excited to build Dealiyo alongside NCAA student athletes and small, local businesses. Together we’ll shape the future of NIL and democratize access to NIL opportunities for all student athletes.