New NIL Era at Kentucky: In-house collective, intellectual property, and asset protection

The “BBNIL Suite” is now officially the in-house collective for University of Kentucky athletics. Now run by JMI, this new agency will help athlete secure third-party NIL deals in addition to the rev-share payments that will be made by school. Kentucky has officially become one of the few schools to move a collective in-house.

This group’s top priority will be to negotiate deals, build athlete brands, and ensure every deal passes through the newly established NIL Go clearinghouse. Kentucky is moving everything under one roof and attempting to protect the brand.

“It gives us an opportunity so that our partners are somewhat protected, Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart said on Tuesday. “The intellectual property, institutional property; it’s really important that if people want to use our marks, use our facilities for part of their endorsement property, that’s part of the deal. You come to the University of Kentucky and you’re part of our family and you get to use our things, but also that’s part of the relationship. There’s a responsibility and a right that comes with that.”

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This new collective will replace Club Blue as the official collective for Kentucky athletics. However, it will not be the only avenue for athletes to try and broker NIL deals. Barnhart says that UK players can try and get deals elsewhere but it will be tricky. The UK brand will not be available if they leave the BBNIL umbrella.

“Under the rules, they can still provide NIL opportunities. They would have to go through the range of compensation in NIL Go nationally like everybody else. We think that now if they do that, they probably wouldn’t have the IP rights and those kind of things. So we’re hopeful that as we go, we can sort of keep folks focused on what has been sort of our pathway forward. We have the financial responsibility in this new world that we’ve gotta take care of,” Barnhart said. “We gotta make sure that we protect both the folks that are in the program in terms of the sponsors as well as protect our student-athletes.”

“If a couple athletes decide to go off and do their own thing, it sort of hurts the entire team. The team is stronger together in everything you do. On the field and off the field. On the court and off the court. Your marketing value and those kind of things are better if you can do those things together. There’s lots of examples of that.”

Barnhart also specifically mentioned that BBNIL would strike some individual deals when needed, but to use the Kentucky brand, athletes will need to work directly with JMI. This is important because collectives are not going away anytime soon. The SCORE Act is a bill that codifies the House settlement and will provide national framework for NIL enforcement. This would give college athletics antitrust protection and could legitimately enforce “valid business purpose” rules upon booster-drive third-party collectives. However, it needs to pass first. Schools need collectives and rev-share payments to fund programs.

The athletic department is eliminating its successful third-party collective and handing the keys over to JMI in this historic deal. UK is all-in on this new NIL venture as the school adjusts to the rev-share era.