KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Final Four is at the height of name, image and likeness usage when it comes to college basketball players. And, these days, players can profit off that.
"A Final Four basketball program, they could pull in more than six figures per year," Blake Lawrence said.
Lawrence is a Kansas City native and the CEO of Opendorse, a company that connects athletes with endorsements.
"Athletes of all sizes are in a really good position today to use technology to make money... Use an app and get paid to post on social media, make appearances, sign autographs," Lawrence said.
So, if a business wants to connect with University of Kansas guard Ochai Agbaji, it can simply click on the Opendorse link on his bio page, determine how much they'd like to offer him and then get to work.
"It's like using Amazon, but instead of searching for household items, you're searching through athletes," Lawrence said.
Lawrence was a former athlete. He was a star football player at Shawnee Mission West and played in college at Nebraska.
He started Opendorse to help promote one athlete, a friend of his. That then morphed into a business promoting professional athletes.
But when the NIL (name, image, likeness) legislation passed, Opendorse exploded.
"In July of 2021, when the NCAA lifted the regulations allowing student-athletes to make money, it really has sky-rocketed," Lawrence said.
Lawrence's company is the largest tech provider in the athletic endorsement industry.
It works with over 80,000 athletes and over 100 universities, including Duke, North Carolina, Villanova and, yes, Kansas.
"The Kansas basketball team is doing quite well and this deep run to the Final Four is going to help them quite a bit."
