Digital sports media company Overtime is looking to turn college athletes into successful content creators, investing $1 million in name, image and likeness deals with college athletes, now free to capitalize on their fame.
Overtime’s first college NIL project is with Ceyair Wright, a USC cornerback who also stars in Space Jam: A New Legacy, for a series fittingly called “Dual Threat.” As the program matures, the company expects to expand beyond its pillars of basketball and football.
“It’s primarily not going to be on-field or on-court experiences,” Overtime CEO Dan Porter said. “It’s going to be what influencer stuff is, which is personality driven.” Many of Overtime stars-to-be are already putting content online, Porter added.
The new content arm, which expects to churn out video series on its social channels highlighting college athletes, will offer them partly performance-driven contracts.
“There’s a lot of sports that people play in college where the path to become a professional athlete and make a meaningful living is not as strong,” Porter said. “So the ability for those people to increase their options going forward is pretty exciting…. It’s going to give the athletes the potential to have a relationship with these brands.”
Overtime, which Porter founded in 2016, built its brand by making social media stars out of high school basketball players like Zion Williamson. The next Zion now has the ability to turn that notoriety into a paycheck even before reaching the NBA.
“Content for young people is driven by young people and, here’s a whole category of what I would call influencer and content creator that’s never been unlocked before,” Porter said. “I believe it’s going to generate a ton of revenue.”
Overtime counts more than 50 million followers among its fan base across platforms. It has drawn funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Sapphire Sport, Bezos Expeditions, Kevin Durant, Drake and others.
