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Group licensing: A new way for college athletes to cash in

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Tee-shirts showing a likeness of former North Carolina basketball players Theo Pinson and Jackie Manuel are seen for sale at Underground Printing in Chapel Hill, N.C., Thursday, July 15, 2021. The Ann Arbor-based company Underground Printing is positioned to help athletes and its business make money with merchandise it can sell online. "It's the same service that students and groups and departments use anyway so this is just an avenue for athletes to do the same thing," said owner Rishi Narayan, whose company has 25 stores from Chapel Hill to Norman, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

With college athletes able to profit from their fame for the first time, North Carolina opened a new path Tuesday for its players to cash in: group licensing for official Tar Heels merchandise.

North Caorlina is believed to be the first school in the nation to launch a group licensing program for current athletes. Under the partnership with The Brandr Group, athletes will receive a cut of net revenue for merchandising opportunities pursued by TBG with products that include the school's official trademarks and logos.

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Participating in the voluntary program wonā€™t restrict individual endorsement deals now that college athletes across the country are clear to profit from use of their name, image and likeness as of July 1.

ā€œThe manufacturers are the experts in the market to know what fans want,ā€ Tar Heels athletic director Bubba Cunningham said in an interview with The Associated Press. ā€œSo if our retailers and licensees think a jersey sale would be absolutely terrific, then theyā€™re going to sell jerseys.

"It might be that posters of our gymnastics team are what all the little girls that come to the meet want, so maybe thatā€™s what itā€™ll be for gymnastics. For the baseball team, maybe itā€™s trading cards.ā€

Athletic logos, trademarks and mottos are considered among the most valuable brand assets an athletic department has and lawsuits are not uncommon as schools protect them. Athletes had long been barred from earning money off this kind of merchandise but NIL has dramatically changed the landscape.

Cunningham said sales of Tar Heels merchandise could be tracked to compensate athletes based on sales of their individually marketed items such as jerseys, while athletes would share money more broadly for group items such as a poster featuring multiple athletes. Athletes could join a group of three or more within a single sport, or at least six across multiple sports.

ā€œWhat we have found in college athletics in the last 30 years is the aggregation of rights generates a bigger pool to be shared by the participants,ā€ Cunningham said. ā€œYou do it individually, there are a handful of individuals that can do very well. But the vast majority will do better financially if you aggregate the rights.ā€

Charles Clotfelter, a public policy and economics professor at Duke, said group licensing for current athletes adds another layer to what is already ā€œa whole new worldā€ with permissible NIL activities.

ā€œUniversities have taken it upon themselves to just commercialize their own name," said Clotfelter, who has written about the commercialization of college sports. "So now weā€™ve just got one more set of factors that are being able to share in this, and there is a certain kind of justice there.ā€

Cunningham had previously backed group licensing models as a broader alternative to athletes pursuing individual deals, and UNC had launched an alumni one this year benefiting former menā€™s basketball and womenā€™s soccer players. He predicted most schools would create group licensing programs for current athletes.

He also referred to the expected return of EA Sportsā€™ college football video game series, which the NCAA had stepped away from in 2013 after it was sued for not sharing game revenue with college athletes in the so-called O'Bannon case.

ā€œIf EA is going to bring a video game back to the market, they need to gather all the rights of all the student-athletes playing football,ā€ Cunningham said. ā€œAnd the simplest way for them to do that is someone else to aggregate the rights of those individual students and get them to EA.ā€

At Michigan, the school isnā€™t freely allowing its trademarks to be used by athletes in NIL deals as some other institutions are across the country. But Wolverines football players recently became the first to strike a deal in which they make money for every custom-made jersey sold with their name and number by the M Den, the athletic departmentā€™s official retailer.

Valiant Management, which was founded by former athletes at the school, has agreements with 90 current Wolverines and has extended the opportunity to every player on the football team.

The M Den was able to pull off the plan as an official school retailer with a Nike deal that allows for it to order and sell custom-made jerseys.

ā€œIt puts Michigan in a unique spot when competitors are doing it, but I can see both sides of it,ā€ said Jared Wangler, a former Wolverine football player who co-founded Valiant. ā€œBut I can see both sides of it because there is a risk of diluting the brand.ā€

At Syracuse, basketball player Buddy Boeheim ā€” the son of longtime coach Jim Boeheim ā€” encountered that obstacle when shooting a promotional video ahead of his image appearing on a box of Three Wishes cereal.

Syracuse alumnus and basketball fan Ian Wishingrad ā€” who developed Three Wishes with his wife and has it in 2,000 grocery stores nationwide ā€” shot the video last week in the Boeheim home gym. But he had to position a rack of balls to obscure the word ā€œSyracuseā€ on the court.

ā€œHopefully, this really works for us,ā€ Wishingrad said. ā€œWeā€™re going to see how this goes. If itā€™s very successful, it proves that this is a very good thing for us.ā€

The player nicknamed ā€œBuddy Buckets" was ā€œa little surprised at firstā€ by the offer, while his mother, Juli, negotiated the deal after sifting through offers. He intends to donate money to local charities and said the goal going forward is for every member of the basketball team to reap a profit. A team camp for kids is being planned for early September.

ā€œItā€™s exciting," he said. "Itā€™s a crazy time, but I think thereā€™s so many good directions you can take this. As long as youā€™re doing it the right way, I think itā€™s a very good thing.ā€

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AP Sports Writers John Kekis and Larry Lage contributed to this report.

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Follow Aaron Beard on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aaronbeardap


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