By Kyle Wills
Youngstown State University athletics has partnered with Opendorse to prepare all student-athletes for success in the next chapter of college sports with a market leading name, image and likeness partner.
Opendorse is a sports technology company that helps athletes with their endorsement deals. Today, more than 60,000 athletes around the world use Opendorse to understand, build, protect and monetize their brands with support from partners including PGA Tour, NFLPA, MLBPA, and over 100 professional and collegiate sports teams.
The partnership will help YSU athletes understand, build and protect their brands with an industry leading education, marketing and compliance technology. The partnership will include Opendorse Ready and Monitor.
With Ready, YSU will provide student-athletes with custom brand value assessments, live consultation sessions with industry leaders, an education series featuring experts on brand building and monetization.
Monitor will help athletes disclose activities to simplify compliance and safeguard eligibility. Institutions are able to evaluate transactions to protect student-athlete and institutional interests.
The new NCAA policy, implemented July 1, allows student-athletes from all three divisions to monetize their name, image and likeness.
The policy specifies that athletes must follow their state NIL laws, and colleges and universities are responsible for determining whether those activities are consistent with state law.
Junior basketball player Mady Aulbach was excited with the announcement and implementation of the new policy and how athletes can finally benefit from their play.
“I was really excited because I think college athletes have worked so hard, and we’ve never been able to benefit off our name before,” she said. “I think it’s about time that college athletes in general can benefit off how well they do in sports.”