The NCAA on Tuesday circulated a memo about its rules regarding men’s basketball multiple-team events (MTEs) that appears to implicitly address—if not cast doubt upon—the new Players Era Festival in Las Vegas, which has agreed to pay $1 million to each of the NIL collectives of its eight participating teams.
The festival, which is set to take place from Nov. 26-29 at T-Mobile Arena and/or MGM Grand Garden Arena, is a joint production of EverWonder Studio—led by media executive Ian Orefice and financially backed by RedBird IMI—and Seth Berger, the co-founder/CEO of AND1 and long-time boys basketball coach of Westtown School in Pennsylvania.
Players Era was unveiled in May with heavy helpings of media fanfare and industry eyebrow hiking. It has the potential to be a transformative force that would further move the goal line—or, as is the case, lower the basket—of the NCAA’s stated policy against NIL money being used as a form of pay-for-play. It could also be a spectacular flop. Or something in between.
Despite being only three months away, the seemingly exorbitant first-time event has yet to publicly announce its sponsors, a broadcast or streaming partner or its schedule slate. EverWonder has, however, recently engaged marketing agency Intersport to handle the festival’s operations, according to people familiar with the situation, while signaling that it will soon provide a public status update.
While the tournament failed, at least initially, to land marquee blue-bloods like UConn, North Carolina, Duke or Kansas, the specter of seven-figures in NIL money proved too good to pass up for a number of programs that finished last season ranked in the AP Top 25: Alabama (#3), Houston (#4), Creighton (#13) and San Diego State (#17). Texas A&M, Rutgers, Notre Dame and Oregon fill out this year’s field.
In a two-page FAQ list sent Tuesday to tournament operators and schedulers, and obtained by Sportico, the NCAA reiterated that its bylaws make it “impermissible” for athletes to receive NIL money in exchange for participating in an MTE, even if that money is first routed through a collective. EverWonder, which previously has said it’s been working with the NCAA, has sought to distinguish the money it is paying to collectives as being tied to athlete “NIL opportunities” with “sponsors outside of competition.”
According to portions of its “talent provider and management” agreements reviewed by Sportico, EverWonder has agreed to three-year deals that commit the studio and its unnamed “partners” to paying $3 million through 2026. Furthermore, the agreements stipulate that EverWonder is supposed to transfer the money to the collectives within 15 days of the event taking place. If EverWonder determines that it is “unable to operate any or all of the 2024 event, the 2025 event, or the 2026 event,” it can pay each collective a termination fee of $250,000.
The agreements further state that participating athletes will be “requested to participate in marketing, sponsorship, endorsement and other promotional activities, and to make public appearances.” These specific NIL activities will be “later specified.”
The collective agreements are separate from the event participation agreements between EverWonder and the schools, which make no reference to the NIL money.
In a June press release, Orefice anticipated that the tournament would yield “$50 million in NIL compensation activities, all within NCAA guidelines” within its first three years.
Another issue highlighted in Tuesday’s NCAA memo is whether the tournament format of Players Era flies. The festival purports to be composed of two distinct, four-team MTE’s: Impact MTE and Power MTE. This latest structure would seem to address the NCAA’s prohibition of two teams from the same conference simultaneously participating in the same MTE. (This year’s festival features two SEC schools, Texas A&M and Alabama, and two from the Big Ten, Oregon and Rutgers.)
Still, the NCAA’s memo suggests that the event would require some interpretive generosity—or a thick veil of ignorance—to pass muster.
“Even if the MTE is structured in such a way (e.g., divisions/brackets) in which two teams from the same conference will not play each other, two teams from the same conference may not participate in the same MTE,” the association wrote.
When reached Tuesday, a Players Era spokesperson declined to comment and the NCAA did not respond to questions emailed to two of its spokespeople.
Since Berger began pitching college head coaches late last year, the fate of Players Era—and whether it would live up to its hype, or live at all—has become a source of endless text message chatter in college basketball circles and consternation among rival tournament operators.
Several rival event operators, who spoke to Sportico on the condition of anonymity, have criticized Players Era for setting unrealistic expectations about the economics of these pre-conference college basketball events. Given that most MTE’s typically bring in $1 million to $3 million of revenue, the prevailing question, beyond Players Era’s NCAA permissibility, is its financially viability. Without tapping some rich, yet-undiscovered revenue stream, it would seem destined to end its first year with a sizable seven-figure deficit.
Players Era plans to expand to “at least 18 teams” by 2025, and already claims commitments from Gonzaga, Michigan, St. John’s, Syracuse and Saint Joseph’s.
