Democratic senators launched a bill Monday that will rewrite a 1961 legislation prohibiting school sports activities conferences from banding collectively to promote their media rights. It’s a transfer they are saying is designed to shield athletes, Olympics sports activities and smaller leagues that could be getting priced out of the more and more costly enterprise of title, picture and likeness offers.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., joined with Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., in backing the Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement (SAFE) Act, a bill that provides lawmakers an alternate to a bill on the House side that has but to come up for a flooring vote.
“We take a broader approach of: How do we solve the fundamental problem of implementing NIL rights, but also keeping revenue for women’s and Olympic sports and an environment where everyone feels like they can compete?” Cantwell mentioned in an interview with The Associated Press. “And we’re maximizing for consumers and the public the amount of content available.”
Conferences presently promote their media rights individually, with the Big Ten, for example, distributing round $958 million to its faculties from the proceeds whereas the Big 12 quantity is at round $558 million — a 52.7% distinction. All conferences are a part of the $7.8 billion ESPN deal for the College Football Playoff, although the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference get more cash from it.
Cantwell has beforehand mentioned she desires to stop school sports activities from turning right into a “Power 2,” that includes these leagues, with everybody else contending for scraps.
Uunder phrases of the landmark House antitrust settlement, faculties as of July 1 are allowed to share up to 22% of their revenues — or round $20.5 million — from TV and different proceeds to pay gamers for their NIL throughout this faculty yr.
It has left some within the non-“Power 2” conferences questioning how they’ll draw prime expertise in soccer and basketball — the primary income drivers — whereas sustaining smaller sports activities that type the pipeline for the groups America sends to the Olympics.
The Democratic proposal, which might supply faculties the identical antitrust safety it does for the NFL and different professional leagues relating to their TV rights, is what billionaire Texas Tech regents chair Cody Campbell has proposed, going so far as working 30-second TV advertisements devoted to the subject on school soccer broadcasts.
“I think he thinks this is a way to even out the resources among all schools so that we can still have ‘Any Given Saturday’” in school soccer, Cantwell mentioned.
Investors have floated concepts of tremendous leagues, which might presumably contain pooling all of the major-conference TV rights, estimating it could drive up to a $15 billion enhance in income.
Cantwell positions her bill as a substitute to the SCORE Act, which began with momentum however has lately stalled on the House aspect regardless of help from the NCAA.
Three key components to that bill included provisions granting the NCAA restricted antitrust safety — particularly within the space of stopping lawsuits over eligibility — prohibiting athletes from changing into staff of their faculties and pre-empting state legal guidelines with a bigger federal legislation.
Cantwell’s bill retains the pre-emption thought however doesn’t embrace the opposite two.
“Those closest to college sports … have consistently called on Congress to take action to address the actual threats facing collegiate athletics,” NCAA senior vice president Tim Buckley said. “This includes protecting student-athletes from being forced to become employees, and ensuring academic standards and other commonsense rules can be applied consistently.”
Cantwell’s bill also offers strengthened protections for athletes from losing scholarships or health care. It would limit the number of times an athlete could transfer schools to two. It would give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general authority to go after parties who violate rules written to oversee third-party collectives that now fund and oversee many of the NIL deals.
The bill calls for football and basketball games to not be behind a paywall in local markets, a provision similar to how the NFL operates and that National Association of Broadcasters president Curtis LeGeyt said would strengthen “the unique connection between universities, their communities and the student-athletes who inspire them.”
The bill also calls on schools to use extra revenue generated from the new pooled media rights to maintain scholarships and roster spots for Olympic and women’s sports at the same or greater levels than they were in 2023-24.
“We’re trying to be creative in how we can help some of these non-revenue sports grow in the future,” Cantwell said.
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AP school sports activities: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports