okay. Elsewhere in the world of sports, the
biz of sports, the Kansas Jayhawks reaching the final
four of this year's N. C double A tournament
en route to becoming the winningest program in college basketball
history and the school could be getting an additional boost
. Thanks to name image and likeness or N I
. O. Well, sports apparel giant idea is
giving student athletes from Kansas and other universities that it's
partnered with the chance to become a paid affiliate brand
ambassadors. So joining me now is Darren Hytner,
founder of the law firm Hytner Legal. Darren,
thanks so much for coming on this show. How
much of a game changer is this Adidas? A
new NHL network in the college sports landscape. Thanks
so much for having me back. It is absolutely
a game changer because we see a major brand To
make a big splash nine months into name image and
likeness rights for college athletes. And while it is
a paid brand affiliate type of partnership, it will
open the door for 50,000 plus athletes across the country
to start making some money even if it's just through
other people clicking their links and making purchases, they
will now be able to make money that they couldn't
make over nine months ago. So I think we're
going to start seeing other brands try to do things
that are similar to Adidas, but Adidas has such
a large footprint because of all the different schools that
it already associates with. So look to other brands
like Nike, like a Pepsi with its Gatorade brand
or coca cola to try to basically mirror what Adidas
has been able to pull off. Mm hmm.
So now for these athletes who would act as ambassadors
, what would their responsibilities be and what kind of
pay could they expect? Well, we don't quite
know just yet what those responsibilities will be. Adidas
came out with its press release not too long ago
and there's a lot of speculation. Most likely what
we're going to see from the athletes are social media
deliverables posts on instagram, on twitter facebook, et
cetera. And really what the athletes are most likely
entitled to receive will be a royalty percentage of the
sales that are actually made through the links that they're
given from an Adidas in this particular circumstance, we're
not sure whether it goes beyond just those pay for
clicks and pay for purchase. But what we have
seen in the first nine months of NHL outside of
Adidas are many deals where brands are actually guaranteeing athletes
a certain sum of money in exchange for those social
media deliverables in exchange for autographs in person, appearances
etcetera. Okay, so here's the question Darren.
How does this change the game? What advantage does
it give to Adidas outfitted schools in recruiting and knowing
that if you are a player, maybe it would
be more enticing to go to one of these Adidas
outfitted schools due to the money that you could make
V. A. N. I. L.
Well, as everybody knows who watches college sports.
The recruiting is intense and it always has been so
enter name image and likeness rights and it's only one
more very important element that goes into the recruiting path
. And so I think schools will use absolutely anything
that they can latch onto in order to try to
entice these recruits to come into their schools. And
absolutely Adidas is trying to arm these schools with just
some extra emphasis, extra ammo in order to try
to move these players to those universities. I fully
expect universities will play this up to their advantage and
I just don't know how long the window Adidas will
have here before their competitors come in. Clearly,
Adidas can take advantage of some of these beloved college
athletes, especially during a heightened time of awareness,
like March Madness, which we see playing out,
but Adidas has got to feel pretty comfortable that this
will benefit the company to talk to me about that
. How can Adidas be so sure that it is
an investment that will pay off. Absolutely. I
mean, if you look at the brands that have
gotten involved this far in the first nine months,
psychologist athletes have been able to make money off of
their fame, I would argue there's probably not a
brand out there that has not received a sizable return
on their investment. I mean, even when we're
talking about the actual guaranteed money that's being paid to
players. We haven't really seen many that are in
the six figure range? Most of them are four
or five figure or less. And so I think
a lot of brands have an opportunity to get a
real return on that minimal investment and especially here with
Adidas, if again, if they're not actually investing
money in the athletes, but only going into a
partnership with them where these athletes are true brand affiliates
, then there's no actual investment that Adidas has to
put into this. They merely have to provide these
athletes with custom links and then sharing the profits.
It's absolutely a win win for the brand. What
about other big brands like Nike and under armor,
Darren. Do you think that they might follow here
in the footsteps of Adidas? I think so,
I think there's a lot of pressure and I think
what's also really interesting is maybe it's not only these
brands focusing on their existing school partnerships, but maybe
they also see an opportunity to ambush to go in
and say we want to partner with athletes at universities
that were not affiliated with and get some return there
because we don't have that existing investment and maybe interrupt
the nice and friendly relationships between brands and these universities
. So while Adidas is very much focusing for the
time being on the existing partnerships that it has with
universities, perhaps it will be a entrepreneurial younger,
more innovative brand saying let's let's disrupt the ecosystem?
Well, Darrin at least for Adidas case, do
we know what they're looking for in ambassadors. Isn't
the biggest names out there in terms of the biggest
superstars? Or is it perhaps some of the athletes
that just have bigger social media followings? How do
they sort of gauge which athletes they want to partner
with? That's what's so interesting about this particular project
. It's not Adidas going in and hand picking the
athletes that it wants to associate with. It has
quite literally said, if you are playing at a
university that we have a relationship with, you are
part of this program, to the extent that you
wish to be part of it. And so really
it opens the door to male, female revenue,
non revenue sports, any athlete at any of these
universities that have existing partnerships with Adidas and so literally
anyone can make money from it. It's beautiful.
Here's another question, Darren is someone who follows the
N. I. L. Space closely when it
comes to college athletes in the height of March madness
right now, who are some of the college athletes
, male and female most sought after when it comes
to some of these deals? Well, you know
, you have the typical blue bloods now in the
final four of the men's tournament. And I'd argue
that pretty much everyone taking the court in the final
four on the men's side is quite marketable. You
have storied programs, especially maybe Duke being the most
with coach K on his way out. But a
really interesting story leading up to the final four and
the elite eight is absolutely ST Peter's. We talked
about a Cinderella team That no one expected as a
15 seed to make it that far and 11 deal
that I really liked was there was a deal between
Buffalo Wild Wings and Doug Peter at Saint Peter's and
talk about a deal coming to fruition so quickly.
That's, that's what's also very nice about this NHL
ecosystem for innovative brands that are nimble, they can
really react to circumstances. They did not predict and
jump on opportunities. And meanwhile, also player at
ST Peter's with, I think three, students and
attendants can earned money as well. Whereas in the
past I've listened an opportunity. So really the doors
were wide open and if someone is marketable brands will
come calling. All right. Darren Hytner, founder
of the law firm Hytner Legal Darren. We appreciate
the time