It has been nearly 18 months since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing student-athletes under NCAA jurisdiction to make money on their name, image and likeness, and in doing so, fundamentally changed the financial ecosystem of college sports.
Per Opendorse, a technology company that facilitates NIL deals and tracks deals signed nationwide, the policy change, referred to by most as "NIL," spurred nearly $917 million worth of deals in its first year and expects to surpass one billion in compensatory payments to student-athletes over the 2022-23 school year.
Players in ASU men's basketball have signed NIL deals as a part of this new era. The number of deals and what they’re paying players have been harder to decipher.
Although there is no public record of what deals were signed by team members or how much money is being exchanged, some information can be gleaned by public evidence of NIL ventures involving student-athletes across ASU athletics, including in men's basketball.
Among the team's most publicly active participants in NIL activity are new transfers Warren Washington, Desmond Cambridge Jr. and Devan Cambridge.
The trio recently signed to Young Money APAA Sports, a NIL representation group that, according to its Twitter bio, "[provides] unparalleled agency & marketing services to professional athletes worldwide." YM APAA Sports was co-founded by rapper Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., also known as Lil Wayne, and Adie Von Gontard, the great-grandson of Adolphus Busch, the founder of international beer conglomerate Anheuser-Busch.
Per YM APAA's Instagram, its partnership with Washington and the Cambridge brothers has yielded NIL deals with jewelry company GLD and Ikonick Art, a motivational art company whose art heavily features portraits of professional athletes.
At many major universities, a significant source of deals for players is partnerships facilitated by NIL Collectives. Collectives are organizations, often led by boosters, designed to help create NIL arrangements for players.
ASU athletics has two official collectives, according to On3 Sports' database that tracks NIL collectives at universities across the country.
The booster-led Sun Angel Collective announced its launch this August, claiming it had raised over $1 million in initial donations and commitments. The collective said it secured over 100 deals for ASU student-athletes last month. During ASU football coach Kenny Dillingham's introductory press conference, ASU booster Nap Lawrence announced he was donating $1 million and encouraged other boosters to do the same.
READ MORE: Arizona native and ASU alumnus Kenny Dillingham to be next head football coach
The Tempe NIL Club, Arizona State’s second NIL collective, is a player-led effort that allows members to subscribe directly and splits the proceeds evenly among ASU football players. Tempe NIL Club confirmed via Twitter DM that its work to secure NIL deals for players had been exclusively within ASU’s football program.
Despite the existence of two collectives, evidence suggests that a significant number of NIL deals signed by ASU men’s basketball players are done without the collectives’ assistance.
Tempe's State Bicycle Co., located on Rural and Apache east of ASU's campus, has signed ten team members to NIL deals. In exchange for a free bike, the players must curate a post on Instagram or Twitter about their bike that includes a promo code for $50 off a State Bicycle bike. If one of their followers used it, the players signed to receive a cut of that bike’s sale price.
Reza Farsi, the company's co-founder and "massive" fan of ASU men's hoops, originally intended to work through the original Sun Angel Collective. Still, the collective’s lack of response streamlined his approach.
"We contacted players directly," Farsi said. "It was something I tried to get involved with, NIL with the Sun Angel Collective. I tried to contact them and never heard back from them, so I just started setting up deals myself. You know everything has been smooth. It's pretty easy to do it yourself, frankly."
Micah Burno, a senior from Scottsdale who walked on to ASU’s men's basketball team, says the nature of State Bicycle's direct relationship with the players has contributed to the deal being successful for both sides.
"(Farsi) was like, 'yeah, we'll get you guys a bike,' and they've been the best ever since," Burno said. "They've been easy to work with. They really look out for all the guys. A lot of our bikes get stolen, you know, it's Tempe, and they’re quick to get you a new part and stuff like that."
Burno's extensive list of deals, which includes Adidas, Snapchat, and GoPuff, has mainly been self-created, unusual for a player without a high on-court profile. Although a series of deals signed by Burno and other team members came through Opendorse, many of Burno's own came via his own efforts to reach out to potential suitors.
"Snapchat I did through Opendorse," Burno said. "But all the other ones are just me. I don’t know anyone that’s got deals outside of Opendorse besides me. I'm the only one besides the scholarship players that do it outside of Opendorse."
Burno said that although he was open to signing deals put together by the collective, the players on the team were largely unsuccessful in making contact with them up to that point.
Brittani Willett, former director of the Arizona Coyotes Foundation, was announced as the Sun Angel Collective’s Executive Director on November 15. Willett said that while the collective does not disclose the terms of deals negotiated for players, she confirmed at least one deal has been signed with a donor to provide compensation to the entire roster.
The President of the Sun Angel Collective, Jeffrey Burg, described the collective’s correspondence with the team as active but within NCAA rules.
"[We have] as open a channel of communication as we can responsibly have within the confines of NIL," Burg said. "There's certainly rules and procedures in terms of us not coordinating too closely with the school, but certainly we have a good feel for what their needs are, and our donors have a good feel for what we need to do to be able to support the team."
There are still many unknowns about the extent of NIL deals on the basketball team. However, the number of deals is only expected to grow as more time passes since the beginning of the NIL era of college sports.
Edited by Walker Smith, Kathryn Field, David Rodish and Luke Chatham.
Reach the reporter at awakefi3@asu.edu and follow him @_alexwakefield on Twitter.
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