Volprofch05
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Cars, apartments and 'six-figure packages': Inside the new, money-fueled frontier of the college football arms race
some excerpts:
“If you would have asked us four to five months ago, we might have said we want to try and raise $3 (million), $4 (million), $5 million annually. Now, the goal is $25 million annually. Or more. And we think that goal is absolutely attainable,” said Hunter Baddour, president and co-founder of Spyre Sports, a Tennessee-centric college sports collective. “We’ll have to work hard, which we will. If this is how the game is played, then game on.”
“We’re prepared to invest a substantial amount of resources into the 2023 recruiting class,” Baddour said. “When you add all that together, it’s well into the seven-figure category.”
Baddour and CEO James Clawson co-founded Spyre Sports in 2020 and quickly found fertile ground in name, image and likeness. It has become one of the sport’s most organized and advanced collectives, a new catch-all term in college sports for groups of fans with varying budgets set aside to help aid players in monetizing their name, image and likeness. Money is pooled from a variety of sources and distributed to players according to their value, while players are responsible for providing deliverables such as event appearances, social media posts or autographs.
While it’s impossible to quantify the precise impact of money from an NIL package in a recruit’s mind, Tennessee signed seven of the nine Class of 2022 prospects Spyre Sports had significant conversations with during the recruiting process, according to Spyre.
“We need to make sure he understands what his potential opportunities are available if he comes to Tennessee, whether it’s businesses that have done deals are have said they want to do them in Knoxville, Nashville or nationally. We show him, these are how many players are on six-figure deals,” Clawson said. “We feel like the quarterback at Tennessee can make as much money as anywhere in the country. If you go out and replicate the season Hendon Hooker just had, there’s no reason why at the end of the day in deals we do and other companies do or national brands, the quarterback at Tennessee shouldn’t make seven figures a year.”
some excerpts:
“If you would have asked us four to five months ago, we might have said we want to try and raise $3 (million), $4 (million), $5 million annually. Now, the goal is $25 million annually. Or more. And we think that goal is absolutely attainable,” said Hunter Baddour, president and co-founder of Spyre Sports, a Tennessee-centric college sports collective. “We’ll have to work hard, which we will. If this is how the game is played, then game on.”
“We’re prepared to invest a substantial amount of resources into the 2023 recruiting class,” Baddour said. “When you add all that together, it’s well into the seven-figure category.”
Baddour and CEO James Clawson co-founded Spyre Sports in 2020 and quickly found fertile ground in name, image and likeness. It has become one of the sport’s most organized and advanced collectives, a new catch-all term in college sports for groups of fans with varying budgets set aside to help aid players in monetizing their name, image and likeness. Money is pooled from a variety of sources and distributed to players according to their value, while players are responsible for providing deliverables such as event appearances, social media posts or autographs.
While it’s impossible to quantify the precise impact of money from an NIL package in a recruit’s mind, Tennessee signed seven of the nine Class of 2022 prospects Spyre Sports had significant conversations with during the recruiting process, according to Spyre.
“We need to make sure he understands what his potential opportunities are available if he comes to Tennessee, whether it’s businesses that have done deals are have said they want to do them in Knoxville, Nashville or nationally. We show him, these are how many players are on six-figure deals,” Clawson said. “We feel like the quarterback at Tennessee can make as much money as anywhere in the country. If you go out and replicate the season Hendon Hooker just had, there’s no reason why at the end of the day in deals we do and other companies do or national brands, the quarterback at Tennessee shouldn’t make seven figures a year.”
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