By Chad Byers and Misha Gordon-Rowe at Susa Ventures
College sports is an American institution. It’s also a huge business — across ticket sales, TV contracts and merch, NCAA athletic departments booked $25B+ in revenue last year. Yet virtually none of the revenue generated for schools and the NCAA goes to the athletes. We believe there should be a marketplace to help student-athletes get paid.
Four years ago, a Supreme Court decision paved the way for college athletes to monetize their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). Since then, athletes began to capitalize on their NIL through endorsement deals and contributions from collectives, groups of boosters affiliated with schools. High profile college athletes like Bryce Young, Arch Manning, and Olivia Dunne even reportedly signed million dollar endorsement deals.
Still, athletes have continued to earn far less than their fair market value.
Earlier this year, we hit a tipping point. In February, a Tennessee federal judge ruled that the NCAA can’t enforce rules prohibiting athletes from negotiating and signing deals with donor-funded NIL collectives before enrolling at a college, whether they are high school recruits or in the transfer portal — meaning they can no longer prohibit using NIL money to entice athletes to schools. In the short period since then, we’ve seen cases like USA Softball Player of the Year NiJaree Canady reportedly getting a $1 million NIL deal to transfer to Texas Tech.
The founders of Fanstake, Greg, Donnie and Alex, realized the inflection moment and jumped at the opportunity. They’ve designed a platform to facilitate free market capitalism in NCAA athletics. Fanstake is an open and competitive platform for fan bases to fund, recruit, and influence their teams directly. Stakes only convert if the athlete chooses to go, transfer to, or stay at the fan’s school of choice.
College sports fan bases are die-hard, competitive and social. They’re deeply invested in the success of their teams, and they want to directly influence the outcome of their teams.
Greg, Donnie, and Alex have been executing at lightning pace. They are a seasoned team of entrepreneurs and executives, with two of the founders previously being unicorn CTOs.
If you want to help GM your team, click here.
Our Investment in Fanstake was originally published in Susa Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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