College Sports Commission approves $87.5M in athlete deals

The College Sports Commission released statistics Thursday saying it has approved 12,175 third-party name, image, likeness deals for athletes worth $87.5 million while rejecting fewer than 400.

The latest snapshot, which includes data June 11 through Nov. 1, also provided an update on turnaround time. It said 74% of deals submitted to the NIL Go platform designed to collect information about the deals were resolved within seven days of receiving all information; 53% took 24 hours or less.

Third-party deals, often with organizations with close ties to the schools called collectives, are a way for athletic departments to go beyond the $20.5 million they’re allowed to pay players directly this academic year as part of the court-approved House settlement.

The average value of an approved deal is $7,186, an amount that has been brought down because of a recent influx of video-game deals worth low four figures, a person familiar with the deals told The Associated Press. The person spoke only on condition anonymity because details of the contracts are not public.

The overall value of the rejected deals was $10.01 million, with an average of $25,400.

Common reasons for rejecting deals include them not fitting the CSC definition of having a “valid business purpose,” a requirement designed to prevent collectives from simply paying athletes to play at the school. Also, a practice called “warehousing” athletes’ NIL rights is against the rules; that happens when a company locks up a player’s NIL rights with no immediate plan to use them.

Athletes must also be receiving a fair “range of compensation” for what they’re doing, a metric being determined by Deloitte, the accounting firm hired by the CSC to create NIL Go.

The 394 rejected deals does not include deals that were not cleared at first but have been sent back for further review.

The CSC said no cases have been sent to arbitration.

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports