California has passed and signed the Fair Pay to Play Act, guaranteeing the state's college athletes the right to market their name, image and likeness, effective Jan. 1, 2023. That effort has spawned imitators in nearly a dozen states and multiple pushes inside the halls of Congress.
It is no longer a matter of if college athletes receive money for playing sports, but when. And when that happens, they'll do so with help.
On Monday, the NFL Players Association announced it is partnering with the National College Players Association and REP Worldwide to help college athletes take themselves to market.
REP (which stands for Rep Every Player) Worldwide handles licensing for the players associations of the WNBA, the World Cup champion US Women's National Team, Major League Soccer and US Rugby.
“REP Worldwide was created to offer all athletes the same world class service that NFL players have when companies want to partner with athletes to market their likeness, image and personalities," said NFLPA Executive Director and NFL Players, Inc. Chairman DeMaurice Smith. “We are proud to partner with the NCPA to offer this service to students who are also athletes. For the first time, a legislature has indicated that these students have rights just like everyone else and we support this continuing movement towards fairness.”
In layman's terms, this movement will create representation in the event a video game company (say, EA Sports) works to collectively license the likeness of all college football players to create a video game (say, NCAA Football) and then pay the athletes for that likeness.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.