There are limitations.
This summer, revenue sharing has entered college athletics and has opened a whole new area for athletic departments to navigate. One question that has come with the rev share is: What happens to collectives?
Earlier in July, the College Sports Commission sent out a memo basically stopping NIL collectives from directly paying athletes for their deals, and they would not be treated as valid businesses.
Well, not according to a report by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports that has now once again changed the rules.
“In a revised memo sent to schools on Thursday, the College Sports Commission announced that booster-backed NIL collectives can, in fact, directly compensate athletes if the transactions meet certain “valid business purpose” benchmarks,” writes Dellenger.
There is still plenty of gray area when it comes to NIL in college athletics, and this only continues that. But at least it helps start to give schools and athletic departments some guidance on what might and might not be allowed from the collectives as a whole.
Going to be interesting to watch as now we also navigate the rev-share waters.