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NIL Go text (Source: nilgo.com)
A recent report from Front Office Sports shows that with college football season kicking off, many deals are stuck in the system with no approval or guidance in sight.
(As a refresher: NIL Go is the new clearinghouse via the College Sports Commission [CSC] where athletes partaking in deals of $600 or more must submit for approval through the system.)
There are reportedly thousands of deals in queue waiting to be approved - many of these being significant dollar amounts and not allowing money to go into the bank accounts of athletes.
Moreso, many of these partnerships are time sensitive, meaning that deals with short deadlines or turnarounds are stuck in purgatory awaiting for someone to give it the green light. (ie., brands wanting to activate with football players ahead of football season.)
As an example: A player might submit approval for a deal that offers them compensation in exchange for participating. But if the player doesn’t hear back from the CSC by the date of the event, the player wouldn’t be able to participate at all—and lose out on potential earnings.
It’s also worth noting that all submissions through NIL Go are reviewed by humans, not machines.
How to fix this
Hire more people solely for NIL Go
Per the Front Office Sports article, only three people (with a fourth person beginning soon) review and approval deals.
While this sounds simple, I truly feel that more trained individuals will speed up the process and remove bottlenecks.
Incorporate AI into the process
Perhaps there is a way for AI to speed things up. Not to replace the human aspect of reviews - moreso streamline the deal and review flow.
Set up rules and procedures that allows AI to complete ~60-70% of the deals, with humans taking care of the final tasks. AI can flag any issues (contract language, dollar amount, etc.) that staff can review quickly and approve or reject.
Time Sensitive approach
If a deal needs immediate approval, perhaps pushing these requests to front of the line could ensure they are approved in a timely manner.
This can be fact-checked by a ‘delivery date’ in the agreement that is required to be uploaded, along with detailed info from the brand that outlines specific due dates on content or appearances.
While this won’t be fair to evergreen deals, it perhaps allows the queue of deals to shrink so that others can be reviewed faster.
Mea Culpa
I read insights from an attorney on Twitter/X that athletes may proceed with deals without approval; however, if the deal is rejected on appeal or outright, then the athlete will need to pay back the money from the partnership.
Personally, I would not recommend this approach to athletes, but to each their own.
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