Posted this on the insider board and Growls, so you can ignore if you've seen it on one of those places, but just thought I'd repeat here for the Cal basketball only fans.
I am pleased to announce that today we have officially launched the California Legends Collective to help Cal students capitalize on the name, image and likeness opportunities that come from attending the #1 ranked university in the world. You can access our site by clicking on CAlegends.com.
First, a tremendous shout out of thanks to the many generous donors, contributors and supporters who made this possible - a number of whom are members of this board. You had the willingness to embrace something new (and more than a little scary) to get this collective launched and to make a meaningful difference for our student athletes and our sports programs. Without you this never would have happened. So thank you for your faith and your trust and your willingness to make a difference.
A number of us have been working on this for quite some time. It has taken many hours and tying up countless loose ends to get something launched we could all be proud of. While it was tempting to just embrace a turnkey solution and get something out there we could quickly show recruits (which is the path many other schools have followed) we ultimately decided that the best university in the world deserved the best collective and that's what we have tried to create.
Powered by Beast Mode
Part of what will make the California Legends Collective unique is that we have partnered with Beast Mode and PlayBooked to help run our collective and to source opportunities for our student athletes. No other school will be able to make this same claim or have this level of tie-in to one of the most iconic names in sports. Many thanks to Marshawn and his partners for so generously volunteering their time and no small amount of their resources to bring this to a reality.
There are two parts of this tie-in that makes this a huge differentiator for us. First, no other collective has this kind of exclusive connection to a sport and lifestyle brand. Much less one that is so identified with a particular school. Much less one that is this appealing to students. Let me just say that again: no one else has this now or ever will. This is unique to us.
Second, Marshawn isn't just a Cal/NFL Legend and Beast Mode isn't just an apparel company. Through Beast Mode Marshawn Lynch either owns or has sizable investments and connections to dozens of businesses. Everything from the Oakland Roots to the Seattle Kraken to restaurants to the IFL to the FCFL to Fanatics, etc. And that's without talking about his charitable work including Fam 1st Family Foundation which was created to impact the lives of Oakland's disenfranchised youth. All ofthese organizations present significant NIL opportunities for Cal student-athletes and Beast Mode and PlayBooked will be actively sourcing these and other NIL opportunities from their extensive business connections.
And not to be forgotten is Marshawn's industry-leading role in trying to ensure athletes make smart investment decisions and focus on their long-term financial well-being. There is literally no one better qualified on the planet to be coaching student athletes about how to manage their personal brands and make educated decisions about their financial future. We are blessed to have his involvement.
Advised by Legends
We have assembled an incredibly impressive group of athletes to act as our advisory board and really be the face of our collective. Our founding advisory board members are Marshawn Lynch and DeSean Jackson, two of Cal's most iconic and famous football players of the last quarter century; Layshia Clarendon, a WNBA all-star and Cal's 4th all-time leading scorer; and Val Arioto, who is maybe Cal's greatest women's softball player ever. They are all truly legends and we are so fortunate to have them.
And it should be noted that these are not individuals passively lending their names to the collective. They want to be actively involved and have come up with a number of things they'd like to personally undertake to further our efforts. Is there a bigger name among players from Southern California with NFL aspirations than DeSean Jackson? If so, I'd be hard pressed to come up with it. 14 years in the League. Three Time pro-bowler, first player ever selected to the Pro Bowl at two different positions. The Miracle at the Meadowlands (which looked a whole lot like what he did for us against Tennessee), etc., etc. You think a high school player in Southern California would like to attend a football camp run by this guy (hopefully staffed exclusively with Cal football players)? Well I do. Hopefully these and many other opportunities can be created by our advisory board members for our students under the collective.
How you can help
So this post is getting long, but let me lay out a bit on how this collective will work. The structure largely follows my earlier posts on NIL opportunities. There are three ways to help, Donate, Subscribe and Purchase. These aren't exclusive and ideally folks will be doing all three. All of the money from these activities will go to our student athletes.
Donate. As many of you know, and as I mentioned up top, we've been collecting contributions from a number of donors to help get this collective off the ground. I and the other founders are covering the startup costs for running the collective, so 100% of each donor's contribution can go to athletes from whichever sport they prefer. Not surprisingly, a lot of the money we've collected to date has been earmarked for players on the football team, although we are hoping to have more donors come in to support more of the teams with sizable contributions. But we are ultimately letting the donors decide where they want their money to go. They can pick a team or even an individual athlete. We are letting our contributors decide.
To give an example of how this would work in practice, say Beast Mode and Play Booked get Uber to hire our athletes to run a marketing campaign for a local ride promotion (just using Uber as an example at the moment don't go off calling an Uber expecting Brett Johnson to be your driver tomorrow). Say Uber is willing to pay $100k for this campaign. After marketing costs to advertise this campaign (targeted internet ads, billboards, etc.) we have $85k left to distribute to athletes. Now say we have 10 players involved and we want to give them $10k each. In that case the $15k shortfall would come from somewhere and where it would come from would be the collective. Hopefully we can mostly cover payments to the athletes exclusively using payments from these third parties and we're going to try to stretch our dollars as much as we can. But in some cases (for example, participating in a fundraiser for a charity) all of the money will come from the collective.
The board of the California Legends Collective will be evaluating each of these opportunities as they come in and working with Beast Mode and PlayBooked to get the most bang for our buck and make sure we are doing the most we can to help our students, while of course taking into account what sports/individual players our contributors wanted to support.
If you are a business owner who would like to employ Cal student athletes for an ad campaign or to promote an event or just a fan who would like to contribute to these efforts, please log onto CAlegends.com and get started. We've worked hard to make the site as intuitive as possible but if you get stuck don't hesitate to send me a PM. Would be happy to talk to you about what we are up to here and can get more granular about how this will work in practice.
Subscriptions. So this is what many schools who talk about their "NIL Program" are setting up. It involves a program where fans can contribute a set amount (From $25 to $10,000 a month at least for football) and in return will receive certain "stuff" based on their contribution level. More money gets you more stuff. So autographed apparel, access to meet and greets, signed team calendars, video shout-outs and chats, personal training sessions, NFTs, etc. You would pick which team you wanted to subscribe to and that money would be distributed across the team. For some teams each member of the team will get an identical amount. For other teams, we'll likely be more granular dispersing it across the team in a way we think will do the most good. The amount of course for each team would vary depending on how many fans are subscribing for that particular team.
So Football? Basketball? Women's Field Hockey? Golf? Crew? Gymnastics? The choice is yours. You pick the team and you pick the amount. Most of the teams top out at $1,000/month for subscriptions, but that doesn't mean fans can't give more. Anyone can click the "Donate" button and give whatever amount they want. The per month subscriptions are just for those who are interested in receiving the benefits. What you get will depend on what you pay, but we're hopeful fans would view this as a way to support their favorite teams more than just a pure quid pro quo. And we're hopeful that fans will subscribe to multiple teams as a way to help.
So what does $10,000/month get you for football? Well if you sign up for a year, the short answer is "lots". A customized limited edition BeastMode X letterman's jacket; a recreation of an official recruiting visit complete with a photo shoot, video presentations, meals, swag bag and a night at the Claremont; and you will be Marshawn Lynch's guest at a Cal game of your choosing. Yes, I'm serious. Yes it is awesome. Let the rest of the football world try to top that!
Some schools doing this hope to generate a few thousand dollars for each athlete in the revenue sports (candidly very few schools are doing anything for the non-revenue sports but we wanted to give fans the ability to reach all the teams). Now you may think this subscription business doesn't sound like the NIL deals you are hearing about in the news and you are right - it's not the stuff making the headlines. But it's meaningful money for a lot of these kids who come from very humble backgrounds and because of their team and school commitments don't really have the ability to have another job. Just not enough hours in the day. It really will help them makes ends meet. And it's important to show all the recruits that this program exists at Cal and we are taking this seriously.
Gear. So this is another significant differentiator for our collective vs. others. Because we are partnering with BeastMode, we have the ability to create and sell branded athletic gear to our fans in a way no one else can. Currently we're selling California Legends branded gear for the collective and it would be tremendous if folks could click our Shop link on CAlegends.com and purchase whatever strikes their fancy. Our logo for the collective is modular, meaning longer term once we get this rolling, we will be modifying the pad in the bearpaw with some Cal specific items and putting that on our gear. Have a few ideas in the works on that already. We are also hopeful we can even eventually allow each player to have their own "store" and design their own gear. That's obviously going to take some time so please don't hold off on purchasing something while you wait. 100% of the money raised from these sales of collective gear, after paying the costs of the vendors, will go into the collective and be used to find opportunities for individual players and teams.
Tax Stuff
As mentioned before, we are currently not planning to apply for 501c-3 status so the payments and contributions you make won't be tax deductible as charitable contributions. Why? Well having consulted with some of the leading tax lawyers in the country we've come to the conclusion that the approach other schools are following of claiming these NIL contributions should be treated as charitable donations is just fraught with risk, both for the Collective and also for the donors. The Private Benefit doctrine and other issues make it hard to envision these payments not being viewed as non-deductible, and candidly with the challenges and legal complexities already surrounding this area we just didn't think this was a good battle to pick. Of course, here I'm just talking about charitable deductions. If you run a business and are hiring an athlete to do marketing for you I would assume those payments would be deductible in the same way as any other business expense would be. But (necessary disclaimer time) I'm not a tax lawyer. Speak with your professionals and do what they say.
So that's more than enough for now. We are actively signing up the Cal athletes and making sure they are not only aware of this opportunity but are receiving some education in things like "taxes" and "withholdings." We want this to be a positive force in their lives and are going to be actively working to sniff out and head off any problems before they arise.
tl;dr: If you are a fan, click CAlegends.com and contribute. If you are a student athlete, click CAlegends.com and start profiting from your name, image and likeness.
Go Bears!
I am pleased to announce that today we have officially launched the California Legends Collective to help Cal students capitalize on the name, image and likeness opportunities that come from attending the #1 ranked university in the world. You can access our site by clicking on CAlegends.com.
First, a tremendous shout out of thanks to the many generous donors, contributors and supporters who made this possible - a number of whom are members of this board. You had the willingness to embrace something new (and more than a little scary) to get this collective launched and to make a meaningful difference for our student athletes and our sports programs. Without you this never would have happened. So thank you for your faith and your trust and your willingness to make a difference.
A number of us have been working on this for quite some time. It has taken many hours and tying up countless loose ends to get something launched we could all be proud of. While it was tempting to just embrace a turnkey solution and get something out there we could quickly show recruits (which is the path many other schools have followed) we ultimately decided that the best university in the world deserved the best collective and that's what we have tried to create.
Powered by Beast Mode
Part of what will make the California Legends Collective unique is that we have partnered with Beast Mode and PlayBooked to help run our collective and to source opportunities for our student athletes. No other school will be able to make this same claim or have this level of tie-in to one of the most iconic names in sports. Many thanks to Marshawn and his partners for so generously volunteering their time and no small amount of their resources to bring this to a reality.
There are two parts of this tie-in that makes this a huge differentiator for us. First, no other collective has this kind of exclusive connection to a sport and lifestyle brand. Much less one that is so identified with a particular school. Much less one that is this appealing to students. Let me just say that again: no one else has this now or ever will. This is unique to us.
Second, Marshawn isn't just a Cal/NFL Legend and Beast Mode isn't just an apparel company. Through Beast Mode Marshawn Lynch either owns or has sizable investments and connections to dozens of businesses. Everything from the Oakland Roots to the Seattle Kraken to restaurants to the IFL to the FCFL to Fanatics, etc. And that's without talking about his charitable work including Fam 1st Family Foundation which was created to impact the lives of Oakland's disenfranchised youth. All ofthese organizations present significant NIL opportunities for Cal student-athletes and Beast Mode and PlayBooked will be actively sourcing these and other NIL opportunities from their extensive business connections.
And not to be forgotten is Marshawn's industry-leading role in trying to ensure athletes make smart investment decisions and focus on their long-term financial well-being. There is literally no one better qualified on the planet to be coaching student athletes about how to manage their personal brands and make educated decisions about their financial future. We are blessed to have his involvement.
Advised by Legends
We have assembled an incredibly impressive group of athletes to act as our advisory board and really be the face of our collective. Our founding advisory board members are Marshawn Lynch and DeSean Jackson, two of Cal's most iconic and famous football players of the last quarter century; Layshia Clarendon, a WNBA all-star and Cal's 4th all-time leading scorer; and Val Arioto, who is maybe Cal's greatest women's softball player ever. They are all truly legends and we are so fortunate to have them.
And it should be noted that these are not individuals passively lending their names to the collective. They want to be actively involved and have come up with a number of things they'd like to personally undertake to further our efforts. Is there a bigger name among players from Southern California with NFL aspirations than DeSean Jackson? If so, I'd be hard pressed to come up with it. 14 years in the League. Three Time pro-bowler, first player ever selected to the Pro Bowl at two different positions. The Miracle at the Meadowlands (which looked a whole lot like what he did for us against Tennessee), etc., etc. You think a high school player in Southern California would like to attend a football camp run by this guy (hopefully staffed exclusively with Cal football players)? Well I do. Hopefully these and many other opportunities can be created by our advisory board members for our students under the collective.
How you can help
So this post is getting long, but let me lay out a bit on how this collective will work. The structure largely follows my earlier posts on NIL opportunities. There are three ways to help, Donate, Subscribe and Purchase. These aren't exclusive and ideally folks will be doing all three. All of the money from these activities will go to our student athletes.
Donate. As many of you know, and as I mentioned up top, we've been collecting contributions from a number of donors to help get this collective off the ground. I and the other founders are covering the startup costs for running the collective, so 100% of each donor's contribution can go to athletes from whichever sport they prefer. Not surprisingly, a lot of the money we've collected to date has been earmarked for players on the football team, although we are hoping to have more donors come in to support more of the teams with sizable contributions. But we are ultimately letting the donors decide where they want their money to go. They can pick a team or even an individual athlete. We are letting our contributors decide.
To give an example of how this would work in practice, say Beast Mode and Play Booked get Uber to hire our athletes to run a marketing campaign for a local ride promotion (just using Uber as an example at the moment don't go off calling an Uber expecting Brett Johnson to be your driver tomorrow). Say Uber is willing to pay $100k for this campaign. After marketing costs to advertise this campaign (targeted internet ads, billboards, etc.) we have $85k left to distribute to athletes. Now say we have 10 players involved and we want to give them $10k each. In that case the $15k shortfall would come from somewhere and where it would come from would be the collective. Hopefully we can mostly cover payments to the athletes exclusively using payments from these third parties and we're going to try to stretch our dollars as much as we can. But in some cases (for example, participating in a fundraiser for a charity) all of the money will come from the collective.
The board of the California Legends Collective will be evaluating each of these opportunities as they come in and working with Beast Mode and PlayBooked to get the most bang for our buck and make sure we are doing the most we can to help our students, while of course taking into account what sports/individual players our contributors wanted to support.
If you are a business owner who would like to employ Cal student athletes for an ad campaign or to promote an event or just a fan who would like to contribute to these efforts, please log onto CAlegends.com and get started. We've worked hard to make the site as intuitive as possible but if you get stuck don't hesitate to send me a PM. Would be happy to talk to you about what we are up to here and can get more granular about how this will work in practice.
Subscriptions. So this is what many schools who talk about their "NIL Program" are setting up. It involves a program where fans can contribute a set amount (From $25 to $10,000 a month at least for football) and in return will receive certain "stuff" based on their contribution level. More money gets you more stuff. So autographed apparel, access to meet and greets, signed team calendars, video shout-outs and chats, personal training sessions, NFTs, etc. You would pick which team you wanted to subscribe to and that money would be distributed across the team. For some teams each member of the team will get an identical amount. For other teams, we'll likely be more granular dispersing it across the team in a way we think will do the most good. The amount of course for each team would vary depending on how many fans are subscribing for that particular team.
So Football? Basketball? Women's Field Hockey? Golf? Crew? Gymnastics? The choice is yours. You pick the team and you pick the amount. Most of the teams top out at $1,000/month for subscriptions, but that doesn't mean fans can't give more. Anyone can click the "Donate" button and give whatever amount they want. The per month subscriptions are just for those who are interested in receiving the benefits. What you get will depend on what you pay, but we're hopeful fans would view this as a way to support their favorite teams more than just a pure quid pro quo. And we're hopeful that fans will subscribe to multiple teams as a way to help.
So what does $10,000/month get you for football? Well if you sign up for a year, the short answer is "lots". A customized limited edition BeastMode X letterman's jacket; a recreation of an official recruiting visit complete with a photo shoot, video presentations, meals, swag bag and a night at the Claremont; and you will be Marshawn Lynch's guest at a Cal game of your choosing. Yes, I'm serious. Yes it is awesome. Let the rest of the football world try to top that!
Some schools doing this hope to generate a few thousand dollars for each athlete in the revenue sports (candidly very few schools are doing anything for the non-revenue sports but we wanted to give fans the ability to reach all the teams). Now you may think this subscription business doesn't sound like the NIL deals you are hearing about in the news and you are right - it's not the stuff making the headlines. But it's meaningful money for a lot of these kids who come from very humble backgrounds and because of their team and school commitments don't really have the ability to have another job. Just not enough hours in the day. It really will help them makes ends meet. And it's important to show all the recruits that this program exists at Cal and we are taking this seriously.
Gear. So this is another significant differentiator for our collective vs. others. Because we are partnering with BeastMode, we have the ability to create and sell branded athletic gear to our fans in a way no one else can. Currently we're selling California Legends branded gear for the collective and it would be tremendous if folks could click our Shop link on CAlegends.com and purchase whatever strikes their fancy. Our logo for the collective is modular, meaning longer term once we get this rolling, we will be modifying the pad in the bearpaw with some Cal specific items and putting that on our gear. Have a few ideas in the works on that already. We are also hopeful we can even eventually allow each player to have their own "store" and design their own gear. That's obviously going to take some time so please don't hold off on purchasing something while you wait. 100% of the money raised from these sales of collective gear, after paying the costs of the vendors, will go into the collective and be used to find opportunities for individual players and teams.
Tax Stuff
As mentioned before, we are currently not planning to apply for 501c-3 status so the payments and contributions you make won't be tax deductible as charitable contributions. Why? Well having consulted with some of the leading tax lawyers in the country we've come to the conclusion that the approach other schools are following of claiming these NIL contributions should be treated as charitable donations is just fraught with risk, both for the Collective and also for the donors. The Private Benefit doctrine and other issues make it hard to envision these payments not being viewed as non-deductible, and candidly with the challenges and legal complexities already surrounding this area we just didn't think this was a good battle to pick. Of course, here I'm just talking about charitable deductions. If you run a business and are hiring an athlete to do marketing for you I would assume those payments would be deductible in the same way as any other business expense would be. But (necessary disclaimer time) I'm not a tax lawyer. Speak with your professionals and do what they say.
So that's more than enough for now. We are actively signing up the Cal athletes and making sure they are not only aware of this opportunity but are receiving some education in things like "taxes" and "withholdings." We want this to be a positive force in their lives and are going to be actively working to sniff out and head off any problems before they arise.
tl;dr: If you are a fan, click CAlegends.com and contribute. If you are a student athlete, click CAlegends.com and start profiting from your name, image and likeness.
Go Bears!