"Players ERA Festival" NIL Regular Season Event in Vegas

[Pete]

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/nil-driven-las-vegas-college-basketball-event-with-millions-paid-to-schools-is-nearly-finalized/

Newly created elite event in Vegas that pays the teams each $1M and allegedly signs the players up for some sort of NIL money going forward.  Houston is in it, and Kansas is on the waiting list.

[wetwillie]

I keep thinking it's unsustainable but next year it will probably be a 2M per team tourney

[DaBigTrain]

I don't need another reason to go back to Vegas 

[MakeItRain]

I hate this for so many reasons. Giving student athletes the chance to capitalize off of their own name, image, and likenesses was something that we needed generations ago. Of course all of the greedy people around sports saw NIL legislation as not a chance to right a wrong, but to line their own pockets regardless of the long and short term damage done to college athletics.

[passranch]

Rutgers???

[WillieWatanabe]

I hate this for so many reasons. Giving student athletes the chance to capitalize off of their own name, image, and likenesses was something that we needed generations ago. Of course all of the greedy people around sports saw NIL legislation as not a chance to right a wrong, but to line their own pockets regardless of the long and short term damage done to college athletics.

not directly the same, but i'm v annoyed with on3 and I hope NIL changes in a way that puts all their damn NIL stuff out of a business.

[Skipper44]

RedBird IMI is an investment consortium majority funded by the United Arab Emirates. It is headed by former CNN CEO Jeff Zucker. FrontOffice Sports first reported on the event in March. An official announcement should land in the next 10 days, according to a source.

Broadcast rights are yet to be formally secured; the games are expected to be distributed on a streaming service instead of traditional linear television.

isn't this the LIV golf playbook ?  It's just Middle East oil money buying into an industry under the Player centric camouflage

[MakeItRain]

RedBird IMI is an investment consortium majority funded by the United Arab Emirates. It is headed by former CNN CEO Jeff Zucker. FrontOffice Sports first reported on the event in March. An official announcement should land in the next 10 days, according to a source.

Broadcast rights are yet to be formally secured; the games are expected to be distributed on a streaming service instead of traditional linear television.

isn't this the LIV golf playbook ?  It's just Middle East oil money buying into an industry under the Player centric camouflage

Not really, no. That part of the article, about Redbird, is really misleading. Zucker definitely doesn't "head" Redbird, Gerry Cardinale and John Thornton are. Zucker is the CEO but he reports to several different people.

More to the point, LIV is owned and operated by the Saudi PIF. Redbird has no one from the UAE in their company or on their board, it's might be the whitest company in all of sports. The UAE money is simply investor funding to make them more liquid. Their money and power comes from a much scarier place, if the sanctity of sports means anything, Goldman Sachs.

I've already seen Redbird completely ruin my redsox. To see them turn their venture capitalist eyes towards college athletics is chilling. They couldn't be more removed from what the college sports fan wants, and they truly don't give one rough ridin' crap either. They're going to do to this what venture capitalists do to literally everything they touch. They'll act with the only goal of wringing every single dollar out of their investment, then will throw the shell of what's left in a ditch to die off.

[ChiComCat]

This has to become the norm for those preseason tournaments now, right?  Offer big NIL packages to entice the best teams