University of Oregon announces historic creation of first licensed school NIL Marketplace in college sports
The University of Oregon on Thursday announced something that hasn't been done in college athletics.
The school is creating an Official NIL Marketplace for the Oregon Ducks, the first licensed school marketplace in all of college sports.
The marketplace will support Oregon student-athletes to maximize their name, image and likeness opportunities through a relationship with Opendorse, which will power the Ducks' platform and allow interested third parties to contact, book, pitch and pay any Oregon student-athlete for NIL activities.
"Our new and innovative partnership with Opendorse allows the University of Oregon student-athletes to continue to maximize opportunities related to their name, image, and likeness," Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens said in a news release. "The Oregon Ducks Marketplace provides an efficient process to allow UO student-athletes to connect with those wishing to offer opportunities, benefitting them and continuing Oregon's leadership role in all NIL-related endeavors."
All Oregon Duck athletes will be able to choose to create their own Opendorse profile that can be customized and promoted to fans on their personal social media channels. In addition to the marketplace, the university will receive full access to Opendorse's all-in-one NIL platform, which will provide compliance, content and education tools to Duck student-athletes.
In terms of the content, student-athletes will be equipped with access to on-demand video and photo content through media libraries, publishing technology and real-time analytics.
Student-athletes also will receive brand value assessments, live consultation sessions with industry leaders and on-demand access to the NIL Masterclass, an education series featuring experts on brand building, monetization and financial literacy from leading brands including Meta, Twitter, the Players' Tribune and Overtime.
"Today's launch sets a new standard for student-athlete NIL support," Opendorse CEO Blake Lawrence said. "Starting today, Oregon fans have a single place where they can directly support their favorite student-athletes with NIL opportunities. We've spent a decade building Opendorse to make athletes more accessible to the people who want to support them — and the Oregon NIL Marketplace accomplishes this for Oregon student-athletes."
Last July, NIL state-based laws went into effect across the United States. Since then, the line between marketing deals and direct payments has been confusing for both student-athletes and universities as the schools are not allowed to pay players and student-athletes directly, but they can receive a payment or payments from companies for services.
Contact Register-Guard sportswriter Antwan Staley at astaley@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @antwanstaley.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: UO announces first licensed school NIL Marketplace in college sports
