A NIL Collective for Basketball - It's a Shame Syracuse Doesn't Have One

[kingtidge]

We're a P4 program in the ACC.

It's been over 4 months since the former collective (Orange Unted/SANIL) went belly-up.

We have a new men's basktball coach and staff that the fanbase is FIRED-UP about it.

The transfer portal opens Tuesday.

Wen NIL Collective????

 

[cuseallday]

We're a P4 program in the ACC.

It's been over 4 months since the former collective (Orange Unted) went belly-up.

We have a new men's basktball coach and staff that the fanbase is FIRED-UP about.

The transfer portal opens Tuesday.

Wen NIL Collective????

Amen, my friend. I've asked SU Athletics about this multiple times, with no response. That being said, I have heard rumblings about a new collective possibly forming ... also, it's possible that SU Football NIL could branch out, as Wildhack alluded to at some point last year.

 

[kingtidge]

Amen, my friend. I've asked SU Athletics about this multiple times, with no response. That being said, I have heard rumblings about a new collective possibly forming ... also, it's possible that SU Football NIL could branch out, as Wildhack alluded to at some point last year.

I emailed Bryan Blair myself over a week ago... no response.

I have herad the same rumors of "collective imminent" for a few weeks now...

Portal starts Tuesday, so if those are more than just rumors, now is the time for launch.

If the rumors are unfounded and no collective imminent, welcome home Gerry...

 

[cuseallday]

I emailed Bryan Blair myself over a week ago... no response.

I have herad the same rumors of "collective imminent" for a few weeks now...

Portal starts Tuesday, so if those are more than just rumors, now is the time for launch.

Agree all around. And I get that Blair just started and whatnot...but man, Orange United closed last fall. Where is SU's third-party NIL strategy beyond football???

 

[kingtidge]

Agree all around. And I get that Blair just started and whatnot...but man, Orange United closed last fall. Where is SU's third-party NIL strategy beyond football???

I don't blame Blair, just figured he might actually respond becuase he's new and knows it's a glaring problem.

Maybe the local sports media will actually cover this issue at some point?

 

[cuseallday]

I don't blame Blair, just figured he might actually respond becuase he's new and knows it's a glaring problem.

Maybe the local sports media will actually cover this issue at some point?

I've been covering this issue for multiple years, my friend!!!

 

[Bayside44]

Agree all around. And I get that Blair just started and whatnot...but man, Orange United closed last fall. Where is SU's third-party NIL strategy beyond football???

Alternative point of view - whales will fund 95% of this and they know where to go and if not they'll get pointed in the right direction quickly.

The grassroots stuff is nice but not a priority.

 

[pearl31]

Alternative point of view - whales will fund 95% of this and they know where to go and if not they'll get pointed in the right direction quickly.

The grassroots stuff is nice but not a priority.

yes, but... it's really gotta be both

 

[kingtidge]

Alternative point of view - whales will fund 95% of this and they know where to go and if not they'll get pointed in the right direction quickly.

The grassroots stuff is nice but not a priority.

Just curious. Are there other P4 programs with no public NIL collective?

If we are keeping up with the Jones' by not having one, I'd feel better about it.

This should be run like a business because it is a business. "We're not going to worry about 5-10% of our potential revenue stream because it's not a priority" is not an optimal business strategy.

 

[Orangezoo]

So im not sure what thread to drop this in but i sure hope that part of the strategic play that BB looks at in terms of NIL ROI is that of treating all players you invest in as a potential asset for the future and looking to produce future reinvestment via placing more SU recruits via HS or the portal in the NBA and NFL accordingly.

With the NBA now getting some traction over building a league in Europe and thus expanding the footprint it will add more opportunities for college hoopers to get to the league even if it starts in Europe. Thus we need to be placing kids more and combining winning with finding those kids that you can aim to be sources of future investment via NIL. With Kiyan here and Melo thus more engaged than ever it’s a perfect link to building that out so you can have a more sustainable flow of funds with a larger pool of NIL investors.

 

[kingtidge]

So im not sure what thread to drop this in but i sure hope that part of the strategic play that BB looks at in terms of NIL ROI is that of treating all players you invest in as a potential asset for the future and looking to produce future reinvestment via placing more SU recruits via HS or the portal in the NBA and NFL accordingly.

With the NBA now getting some traction over building a league in Europe and thus expanding the footprint it will add more opportunities for college hoopers to get to the league even if it starts in Europe. Thus we need to be placing kids more and combining winning with finding those kids that you can aim to be sources of future investment via NIL. With Kiyan here and Melo thus more engaged than ever it’s a perfect link to building that out so you can have a more sustainable flow of funds with a larger pool of NIL investors.

Not sure I quite follow, but I think you have (4) buckets of recruits now (as a P4 program) and you have to recruit all of them with varying strategies and try to keep key pieces where you can:

1. Frosh straight out of highschool/academies
2. Foreign-born players (good ones with pro/semi-pro experience)
3. Experienced upperclassman portal players that will spend multiple years in college
4. 1-and-done top tier players

You need to constantly be sourcing new talent from the buckets above, but I think the secret sauce is evolving and focusing on RETENTION of core players by programs that can source an KEEP some of that adequate talent for multiple years, in categories 2 and 3 above especially...

Yes, you can spend big in the portal and reload an entire roster with talent, but for well-coached systems and programs, retaining effective, key players for more than one year will improve success and build continuity in what works and more winning should come with it.

 

[Orangezoo]

Not sure I quite follow, but I think you have (4) buckets of recruits now and you have to recruit all of them with varying strategies and try to keep key pieces where you can:

1. Frosh straight out of highschool/academies
2. Foreign-born players (good ones with pro/semi-pro experience)
3. Experienced upperclassman portal players that will spend 4+ years in college
4. 1-and-done top tier players

You need to constantly be sourcing new talent from the buckets above, but I think the secret sauce is evolving to be RETENTION of core players by programs that can source an KEEP some of that adequate talent for multiple years, in categories 2 and 3 above especially...

Yes, you can spend big in the portal and reload an entire roster with talent, but for well-coached systems and programs, retaining effective, key players for more than one year will improve success and build continuity in what works and more winning should come with it.

Point is you need talent to win and talent you send and develop to the league even if it’s for a year or two so you have more doors to knock on and pros to help with building your donor base to give back.

 

[kingtidge]

Point is you need talent to win and talent you send and develop to the league even if it’s for a year or two so you have more doors to knock on and pros to help with building your donor base to give back.

I think we're talking the same language, and I think the retention strategy plays into that as well... If you can show that 2, 3, and 4 years guys stay and transition well to a pro league regularly (as opposed to to 1-year mercs that do 4 years at 4 different programs chasing the highest NIL bag and then wind-up struggling to make the pro step and languish and fizzle in the G-league)... then you can build something attractive.

All of this will compete against the "1-year mercs that do 4 years at 4 different programs chasing the highest NIL bag" strategies that these players' AGENTS will be pushing, as they want their biggest cuts as well on EVERY deal, so players will have to see the value of sticking around in one program for sure...

 

[rjs13090]

I emailed Bryan Blair myself over a week ago... no response.

I have herad the same rumors of "collective imminent" for a few weeks now...

Portal starts Tuesday, so if those are more than just rumors, now is the time for launch.

If the rumors are unfounded and no collective imminent, welcome home Gerry...

I called my rep. They are missing the boat. We need an app that makes it easy to donate. It should show the number of donors and the amount collected. Make it easy for everyday fans. I know it will be supported. Gerry needs actions, not rhetoric.

 

[llandz]

Can the athletic department even set this up? I thought NIL had to be arms length from the university. Can Bryan Blair be involved in this? How much of a role can the athletic department take if any at all.

 

[Consigliere]

Can the athletic department even set this up? I thought NIL had to be arms length from the university. Can Bryan Blair be involved in this? How much of a role can the athletic department take if any at all.

They cannot. There are two options. Have an independent group of donors, alums and business leaders set up an organization, or contract with a commercial entity. SU did the latter with OrangeUnited but when their parent SANIL closed down they found the new group, BluePrint Sports to have t’s & c’s that were unacceptable. There simply aren’t many options out there. The former option is the approach SU Football NIL follows but up until now they support only that sport.
The University can assist informally with publicity and athlete access but cannot broker NIL deals.
And this has become much more complex with legal issues, contract authoring, tax ramifications and clearinghouse reviews. It’s not like a small group of delusional fans can pull something together to pay an athlete for the use of his name to rebrand their tailgate!

 

[kingtidge]

Can the athletic department even set this up? I thought NIL had to be arms length from the university. Can Bryan Blair be involved in this? How much of a role can the athletic department take if any at all.

The school can actually be more involved now with NIL given recent law changes, but the involvement is still somewhat limited.

But that said, it seems the school made a decision to not to get involved perhaps under the view that NIL is a funding competitor for Annual Giving Day?

That view is bass-ackwards, as NIL is a separate, necessary component and is now a huge component of every successful football and basketball program.

Moreover, I think they really need to actively support both (NIL and direct school donations) to the best of their ability, with the realization that:

• NIL support should be targeted to all fans and supporters - whales, casuals, die hards, alums, non-alums, etc.
• Annual Giving Day is really for an alumni-only target demo

We should be able to walk and chew gum and support both well.

What does the school effectively supporting NIL look like?

Goal: Make NIL promotion and donation prolific, effective, and easy, regardless of which collective is doing it. Standardize the effective methods for this and get all collectives rowing in unison together with effective platforms to garner the most amount of donations.

• NIL Website and Donor Platform: School develops a purpose-designed donor website and platform that effectively and efficiently takes NIL donations, supports NIL promotions, easy checkout options (CC, Paypal/Venmo, ACH, Zelle, ApplePay, GooglePay, etc.) and supports subscriptions (monthly, quarterly, and annual auto-renewals, etc.
• NIL Donor App: A sister iOS and Android app that does the same as the website and runs of the same base platform and DB as the website using responsive codeset.
• Standardized, Licensable & Skinable: Both web platform and app could be licensed to a collective (football collective, men's bball collective, women's bball collective, etc.) for a nominal fee (say $1 a year) and the platform would be fully skinable so each collective can style it to their own collective brand and use CMS to modularly customize it. A standardized offering that works... If it works really well, license it for a lot more than $1 year to other schools' collectives (new revenue stream)
• Promotional Schedule & Social Advertising: Work with each collective to establish target canvas promotional timeframes during the year to really push for NIL donations and support those efforts with targeted social media advertising and getting the "Donate Now" message in front of our fanbase with easy click--to-donate or tap-to-donate ads that are effective
• Partner with the RIGHT digital development firms and social ad agencies to provide the deliverables above and updates and change them when necessary.

Anyways, an approach with big ideas... Gonna need a good consultant group to drive this development and spend some real money to do it right.

I expect Blair will be coming up with some type of approach like this that will increase the school's involvement and control over NIL by working more closely with the collectives. Provide them with business tools and donation strategy that works efficiently and help standardize an ongoing approach maximizing donation opportunities while taking more control of how the funding is done and when.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Alternative point of view - whales will fund 95% of this and they know where to go and if not they'll get pointed in the right direction quickly.

The grassroots stuff is nice but not a priority.

Typical Syracuse point of view - ignore the regular fans. This is how you drive engagement. This is what makes people go to more games. They just don't get it at all.

 

[IthacaMatt]

The school can actually be more involved now with NIL given recent law changes, but the involvement is still somewhat limited.

But that said, it seems the school made a decision to not to get involved perhaps under the view that NIL is a funding competitor for Annual Giving Day?

That view is bass-ackwards, as NIL is a separate, necessary component and is now a huge component of every successful football and basketball program.

Moreover, I think they really need to actively support both (NIL and direct school donations) to the best of their ability, with the realization that:

• NIL support should be targeted to all fans and supporters - whales, casuals, die hards, alums, non-alums, etc.
• Annual Giving Day is really for an alumni-only target demo

We should be able to walk and chew gum and support both well.

What does the school effectively supporting NIL look like?

Goal: Make NIL promotion and donation prolific, effective, and easy, regardless of which collective is doing it. Standardize the effective methods for this and get all collectives rowing in unison together with effective platforms to garner the most amount of donations.

• NIL Website and Donor Platform: School develops a purpose-designed donor website and platform that effectively and efficiently takes NIL donations, supports NIL promotions, easy checkout options (CC, Paypal/Venmo, ACH, Zelle, ApplePay, GooglePay, etc.) and supports subscriptions (monthly, quarterly, and annual auto-renewals, etc.
• NIL Donor App: A sister iOS and Android app that does the same as the website and runs of the same base platform and DB as the website using responsive codeset.
• Standardized, Licensable & Skinable: Both web platform and app could be licensed to a collective (football collective, men's bball collective, women's bball collective, etc.) for a nominal fee (say $1 a year) and the platform would be fully skinable so each collective can style it to their own collective brand and use CMS to modularly customize it. A standardized offering that works... If it works really well, license it for a lot more than $1 year to other schools' collectives (new revenue stream)
• Promotional Schedule & Social Advertising: Work with each collective to establish target canvas promotional timeframes during the year to really push for NIL donations and support those efforts with targeted social media advertising and getting the "Donate Now" message in front of our fanbase with easy click--to-donate or tap-to-donate ads that are effective
• Partner with the RIGHT digital development firms and social ad agencies to provide the deliverables above and updates and change them when necessary.

Anyways, an approach with big ideas... Gonna need a good consultant group to drive this development and spend some real money to do it right.

I expect Blair will be coming up with some type of approach like this that will increase the school's involvement and control over NIL by working more closely with the collectives. Provide them with business tools and donation strategy that works efficiently and help standardize an ongoing approach maximizing donation opportunities while taking more control of how the funding is done and when.

Well, one way the University controls the money, and the other way they don't.
I think that's it, right there.

 

[Bayside44]

Typical Syracuse point of view - ignore the regular fans. This is how you drive engagement. This is what makes people go to more games. They just don't get it at all.

That's just about every collectives point of view. This stuff is funded by whales and it's play money.

Someone knows that asking middle class people to fund kids that make 20X more then them is bad idea to scale.

 

[richmondcuse03]

That's just about every collectives point of view. This stuff is funded by whales and it's play money.

Someone knows that asking middle class people to fund kids that make 20X more then them is bad idea to scale.

There are plenty of schools that have successful grass roots initiatives. It’s in part a way to build your donor base. If it only raises 500k-2M a year that’s still better than nothing. You also need somewhere they folks want to donate 2500-25k can give to as well. They’re not whales but 10-50 of those helps.

We should be doing both. It’s very easy to do and there are tons of models we can follow.

We should remove every obstacle to raising money. There never should be a fan saying “I want to give nil money but I can’t figure out how.”

 

[rrlbees]

There are plenty of schools that have successful grass roots initiatives. It’s in part a way to build your donor base. If it only raises 500k-2M a year that’s still better than nothing. You also need somewhere they folks want to donate 2500-25k can give to as well. They’re not whales but 10-50 of those helps.

We should be doing both. It’s very easy to do and there are tons of models we can follow.

We should remove every obstacle to raising money. There never should be a fan saying “I want to give nil money but I can’t figure out how.”

I want to give nil money but I can’t figure out how.

 

[Orangezoo]

There are plenty of schools that have successful grass roots initiatives. It’s in part a way to build your donor base. If it only raises 500k-2M a year that’s still better than nothing. You also need somewhere they folks want to donate 2500-25k can give to as well. They’re not whales but 10-50 of those helps.

We should be doing both. It’s very easy to do and there are tons of models we can follow.

We should remove every obstacle to raising money. There never should be a fan saying “I want to give nil money but I can’t figure out how.”

Patiently waiting for something to get out there to be in that second category. Threw in some small for the coaches fund but waiting on this. Hopefully there are a good bunch of us in that category with wallets ready for when it’s truly NIL for hoops

 

[Bayside44]

There are plenty of schools that have successful grass roots initiatives. It’s in part a way to build your donor base. If it only raises 500k-2M a year that’s still better than nothing. You also need somewhere they folks want to donate 2500-25k can give to as well. They’re not whales but 10-50 of those helps.

We should be doing both. It’s very easy to do and there are tons of models we can follow.

We should remove every obstacle to raising money. There never should be a fan saying “I want to give nil money but I can’t figure out how.”

I'm not against it. With the portal opening they need big money fast and should be laser focused on that was my point. The fan who wants to give a hundred bucks today isn't buying our next point guard next week. George didn't work out but that was three or four guys over 48 hours getting that done.

If they can get grassroots NIL to hit 7 figures over a year (my number is 5K and under) more power to them.

 

[kingtidge]

That's just about every collectives point of view. This stuff is funded by whales and it's play money.

Someone knows that asking middle class people to fund kids that make 20X more then them is bad idea to scale.

For whales, you need a collective with:

• Business bank account
• Multiple methods for funding it (wire, ACH, Check, CC, etc.)
• Intermediary handlers for player/agent negotiations and school/program communication on player targets and funding available
• Contract lawyers/Legal services, for contract writeup/finalization
• Clearinghouse support to meet all compliance requirements

Once you have all that, expanding an arm to take smaller donations from fans is a no-brainer (front-facing donor website and donor app). I would think that SU fanbase size could garner between $500K - $1 mil in smaller fan donations if done right year 1. Just a conservative guess but not peanuts.

Then you add marketing for small and mid-level donations and auto-renewal options (monthly, quarterly, annual):

• Marketing support for NIL special fundraising events, donation promotions and scheduling, digital advertising prospecting, canvasing, and re-marketing, email and sms marketing and auto-renewal donations/retention, etc.

The real question is do we develop that business structure in-house or partner with 3rd party services for that structure?

We've already been burned once when we did 3rd party outsourcing with SANIL, so there is precedent to consider more control and less reliance on 3rd party operators for this.

Also, FWIW, reading between the lines, SANIL was the most "cost-effective" 3rd party collective service available and it turned out their revenue stream and ROI model was not sustainable, so going 3rd party with the cheapest option has risks. Lesson hopefully learned.