Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JUNE 24, 2024 17 neurship and Innovation, which was founded in 2017 with a $22.5 million gift from philanthropist and entrepre- neur Peter J. Werth. The institute launched Champion- ship Labs in 2022 to provide student athletes entrepreneurial support, as they can now earn money by creating and promoting their own brand and selling merchandise across social media — which can mean selling autographed jerseys on TikTok or Insta- gram, or doing their own sponsored podcasts — or by signing contracts to promote existing brands or businesses. Werth Institute Director David Noble said Champi- onship Labs provides counsel on topics that range "from best practices on social media to experimenting behind or in front of the camera, to launching a clothing line, or whatever a student can dream up." Benedict, UConn's athletic director, said Championship Labs' role is critical. "What the Werth Institute does through Championship Labs is really a big piece of supporting our student athletes on a daily basis," he said. NIL platform While getting the Werth Institute, which also serves regular students, involved was important, UConn still had to develop a strategy for raising money for its athletes. Butikofer said the NIL landscape includes "three buckets." The first involves "collectives" — organizations independent from the university that raise money, including from businesses and wealthy donors, to compensate athletes. The second bucket involves the more traditional brand deals, in which athletes sign agreements to be paid to promote a brand or business. The third bucket is group licensing, which involves athletes who pool their NIL rights and then license them for compensation as a group. Butikofer said schools are prohib- ited from acting on behalf of a specific athlete. "We can't act as their agent," he said. "We can't negotiate contracts for them." Schools also have limited say over the contracts athletes sign. They can set institutional policies to protect their own brands, which includes prohibiting athletes from promoting gambling, alcohol, tobacco or marijuana. "I think the only space that we really have had to navigate at this point is a brewery," Butikofer said. "Is it a restau- rant, or are they just producing beer?" Connecticut joined several other states in passing its own NIL law in July 2021. It requires athletes to disclose to the school "any NIL activity that results in compensation" within 10 days. "Sometimes we know about deals that are happening weeks in advance, sometimes we find out a couple of days before," Butikofer said. "But we've had no issues." While athletes, coaches and admin- istrators can all utilize the expertise of the school's two compliance offi- cers, keeping track of each individual athlete's deals can be difficult. So, like many NCAA institutions, UConn contracts with Opendorse Market- place, an NIL platform. Opendorse, Benedict said, allows athletes to build profile pages, enabling fans seeking autographed jerseys, or businesses seeking athletes for promotional events, to find them. "It also serves as a business-to-busi- ness application," he said, noting that it can handle payments and record transactions, "which is ultimately important from a reporting standpoint for a lot of reasons." Benedict said the platform also can generate a 1099 tax form used by independent contractors to report income to the IRS. The collectives The money, of course, is the root of NIL. The whole point is to allow student athletes to monetize their names and faces. And make no mistake, the money can be significant. In February, college sports media and data company On3 reported that NIL collectives and schools in the major conferences are projected to spend about $325 million over the next 12 months on name, image and likeness efforts. While specifics of NIL deals are generally not disclosed — they are not subject to Freedom of Information laws — information about their value sometimes leaks out. For example, ESPN reported in May that former Utah basketball star Great Osobor transferred to the University of Washington in part because of a $2 million NIL deal. Butikofer stated unequivocally that, other than scholarships, none of UConn's athletics budget can be used to pay athletes. It would be difficult for the institution to take on that cost, given that UConn Athletics continues to run a deficit — $30.2 million in 2023, down from $53 million in 2022. Butikofer also said NIL funds are not intended to be used to pay recruits Money raised by outside organi- zations, however, can compensate athletes for things like participating in teaching camps, or visiting schools or hospitals. That's where the collectives come in. There are two that raise money for UConn, including Bleeding Blue for Good, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that was co-founded two years ago by alums John Malfettone, a former private equity executive who also worked at GE Capital and KPMG, and John Greenblatt, who previously served as interim CEO of the UConn Foundation, the school's charitable arm. Malfettone, who serves as pres- ident of Bleeding Blue, said he and Greenblatt did not want to raise money just to pay athletes. They also wanted them to learn something. "That's why we combined it with a 501(c)(3)," he said. "The athletes only get paid when they do some chari- table work. … It's not just benefiting the athletes financially, it's benefiting them in terms of their understanding of what it means to be a role model." Bleeding Blue Executive Director Jared Thomas, a former Army officer with a law degree, said it's also David Noble COLLEGE NIL RANKINGS WOMEN'S MEN'S COLLEGE BASKETBALL TOP 100 NIL RANKINGS TOP 100 NIL RANKINGS Storrs Central, a UConn sports news and inside access subscription service, is a NIL revenue generator By David Krechevsky davidk@hartfordbusiness.com T hese days, you can watch UConn's athletic teams on a variety of networks and streaming services. But if you want exclusive, behind-the-curtain, insider access to the athletes, a new website hopes to satisfy those cravings. Storrs Central, at storrscentral.com, was conceived by the leaders of Bleeding Blue for Good, a UConn name, image and likeness (NIL) collective. Ben Renshaw, who is on Bleeding Blue's board and is an investor in Storrs Central, said the website was created as a for-profit entity to raise NIL money. "As the world has morphed, we quickly realized that a 501(c)(3) charitable donation organization is not the right way to approach corporations as well as individual fans," he said. "We created Storrs Central to handle those two pieces of the three-legged stool." The exclusive content website, and a new mobile app, can better reach more fans, while "also being able to offer sponsorships to corporate entities," Renshaw explained. He added that while Bleeding Blue and Storrs Central are linked by their NIL fundraising for UConn, "they have distinctly different ways of going about it and different audiences to appeal to." Both the website and mobile app offer free content or a premium subscription for $9.99 per month, or $99.99 per year. As of May, Storrs Central had 1,000 subscribers, which it hopes to build on, with all the subscription revenue going directly to UConn athletes. "We want to tell the stories of what Cam Spencer was saying to (University of North Carolina's) Armando Bacot that got him fired up. We want to know what they do on an off day," Renshaw said. "And we realized that the players are really open to that because, one, it does build their brand, and two, it's going to generate income for them. The more subscribers there are, the more revenue, the more subscribers, the more eyeballs, the more sponsorship revenue follows that." PAIGE BUECKERS AZZI FUDD KK ARNOLD ALEX KARABAN SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS 2.8M 350K 111K 12.8K NIL VALUATION $1M NA NA NA RANK 3 16 68 19 Source: On3 On3, a NIL news website, calculates the NIL earning potential of high school and college athletes as compared to the overall market. It then offers a national ranking. Here's a look at how some UConn athletes were ranked, as of June 14: Ben Renshaw Continued on next page

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