Partnership to offer student-athlete brand-building packages to college programs
Opendorse and Overtime today announced the launch of a partnership built to prepare the endorsement industry for coming changes to Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) policies in college athletics. The companies will provide college athletics programs with custom content creation and distribution technology that has proven to build personal brand value for athletes.
The partnership pairs the endorsement management platform used by 25,000 of the world’s most marketable athletes in Opendorse, with the media company that has captured the attention of today’s athletes and fans in Overtime. By connecting Overtime’s ability to create culture-shaping content with Opendorse’s on-demand social media publishing technology, college athletics programs will gain a recruiting advantage, while providing student-athletes with one-tap publishing access to the most sought-after content in sports.
“In just a few years, we’ve grown to over 40 million followers because we know what the under-35 audience wants to see,” said Zack Weiner, Co-Founder and President of Overtime. “Appearing on Overtime gives athletes instant clout, but also, it’s always been important to us to tag every athlete we feature and help them grow their own followers. By partnering with Opendorse, we’re able to further enable athletes to build their personal brands as we create content to easily be posted to their accounts and together, usher in a new era for college sports.”
“By partnering with Opendorse, we’re able to further enable athletes to build their personal brands as we create content to easily be posted to their accounts and together, usher in a new era for college sports.”
“College athletic programs who provide this opportunity to their players will set the standard of understanding of what student-athletes want to see from the school they attend,” said Opendorse CEO Blake Lawrence. “This partnership brings together two premier brands, empowering athletes by providing them with the content they love and the technology already used by the pros they look up to. This will be a competition killer for the recruiting battle of the next decade.”
The package is an addition to Opendorse Ready, the NIL readiness program leveraged by top athletic departments in college athletics including Clemson, Nebraska, and Louisville, among others. Participating programs are able to select a variety of Overtime content creation opportunities.
The opportunities include athlete and team-centric content creation, offering a variety of options, such as athlete-specific shortform highlights and/or team-specific full-length docu-follow episodes. The content is then added to the program’s Opendorse Smart Media Library, where student-athletes can access and publish the media on-demand to their personal social media channels.
“NIL policy changes have created an arms race in college athletics,” said Brandon Rhodes, Senior Director, Strategic Partnership at Overtime, “Programs need an answer for how they’re helping student-athletes prepare for the coming change and Overtime and Opendorse were built for this moment. When student-athletes across the country are able to bring Overtime-created content to their fans and followers, they will be in a position to build a captive, engaged audience that will aim to attract sponsors in the same way media companies like Overtime do today. Ultimately, we want to empower athletes to make money from the following we’ve helped them build.”
