New Athletes.org COO: 'We have to make sure athletes have their seat at the table'

The five-month-old organization Athletes.org has hired Dev Sethi as chief operating officer, adding a veteran of Meta and Google with extensive athlete advocacy experience to its growing stable of industry leaders.

Amid unprecedented disruption within college sports, Athletes.org, a non-profit organization, launched in August to provide on-demand support to athletes navigating the college experience while providing a platform to speak on the future of college sports.

“I strongly believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help shape college athletics and help write its future,” Sethi told On3. “That is certainly in keeping with what I’ve done in terms of athlete advocacy. We are at a moment in time where the new version of college athletics is being written. I’m excited to make sure that athletes’ voices are represented in creating the system they are going to be participating in.”

On3 is a media partner with Athletes.org, which was founded by former INFLCR founder Jim Cavale and former Penn and NFL linebacker Brandon Copeland. It is structured similarly to other players’ associations, with chapters within sports and conferences based on participation.

All individual Athletes.org chapters will be comprised of athletes based on their sport and conference. The first two chapters – for ACC men’s basketball athletes and for ACC women’s basketball athletes – launched in late November.

Athletes.org’s mission resonates with Dev Sethi

The three pillars of Athletes.org’s mission are maximizing income for athletes, amplifying athletes’ voices and supporting them in key decisions on and off the playing field. Dev Sethi’s focus will lean heavily on unlocking athlete income opportunities, particularly through group licensing and non-traditional group licensing avenues.

Those possibilities pique his interest because he believes there are ways to create more athlete revenue opportunities than what has been seen so far since the inception of NIL in July 2021.

“When it comes to maximizing income, Dev coming in is huge,” Cavale told On3. “Because as our COO, he is going to help us build out the sales infrastructure to continue generating group licensing and group NIL deal flow for these power conference chapters of athletes that these team reps are going to be leading in men’s and women’s basketball and football power conferences. 

“Bringing in somebody that has brand partnership experience, bringing somebody who has experience building and leading a team at a company like Instagram Sports, bringing somebody who’s an executive who has been in the sports world for a while and seeing the evolution, especially in college, is going to be huge.”

Athletes must have role in creating new model

Athletes.org strives to impact athletes to impact the world, a strategy that aligns with the advocacy work Dev Sethi and his team did on behalf of athletes at Instagram and Meta, helping empower athletes to take advantage of their platforms.

Sethi, a 2023 Sports Business Journal Forty Under 40 honoree, spent five years as head of sports at Instagram before serving as director of sports partnerships for Meta. 

He built a student-athlete practice within the walls of Meta/Instagram, an industry first that included innovative educational partnerships with INFCLR and others. He also launched two linchpin programs serving underrepresented voices in college athletics – female athletes and HBCUs.

Throughout the history of college sports, Sethi said, this is the first time athletes rightfully will have a role in the creation of the system they will be a part of. In other words, athletes will be going from recipients of the college sports system to participants in what is being created.

“We have to make sure they have their seat at the table,” Sethi said.

Sethi: Collaboration key to college sports’ future

Dev Sethi said it is “of monumental importance” that athletes’ voices have a say in the creation of a new model. The industry is hurtling toward a true revenue-sharing model and a potential employee model, at least for some athletes.

Most industry leaders believe collective bargaining for athletes is on the horizon.

A key point: Sethi believes collaboration among stakeholders is required to create a new system – with athletes obviously included.

As he framed the ideal scenario, those contributing to creating the new system won’t be “sitting across from each other at the table; they will be sitting around the same table,” Sethi said.

“And that’s a much better way to think about how we can all collaborate on creating a new system that addresses all the key issues, all the key concerns, all of the innumerable opportunities around what a creation of a new system can unlock and entail, but with the foregone conclusion that athletes are going to be at that table.”

Bargaining between athletes, schools likely on horizon

Cavale added the only way the industry is going to have regulation, boundaries and governance is with collective bargaining between the athletes and their school, their conference, and potentially the College Football Playoff and NCAA – and he says that is the infrastructure they are building out.

Dev Sethi has been viewed as an expert in the creator economy since before the term existed, having worked with athletes and YouTubers from 2011-13. Plus, he anticipated the NIL Era, and thus the importance of social media, back in the fall of 2020, which inspired the creation of a Meta/Instagram practice dedicated solely to college and youth athletes in advance of NIL being permitted.

With Athletes.org, Sethi will continue to build AO’s infrastructure, ensuring they invest in strategic hires and areas of the organization that create value for athletes. 

A former mentor of Sethi always stressed the importance not only of what you’re building or what you’re working on but also sequencing. Sethi believes that is critically important for a company in its early days to fortify its foundation, rather than merely attempting to bootstrap the solution. 

The core mission revolves around the athletes themselves. And Sethi stresses that Athletes.org will not unilaterally make decisions on behalf of athletes. 

“This is about us amplifying their voices,” Sethi said, “and making sure that they understand what’s at stake, what the key issues are, and making informed, educated decisions that will shape their experiences and experiences of future generations of athletes.”