🩼 College Athletes Can Now Get Paid for Getting Injured

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🗞 The Big Story: College Athletes Can Now Get Paid for Getting Injured

📉 Biggest Loser: The NFL is Losing Money in Brazil, On Purpose

🏆 Winner’s Circle: OnCloud Made the Perfect Shoe (In Under 6 Minutes)

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🗞 The Big Story

It’s now possible for college athletes to get paid for getting injured.

Background: Even though the headlines make it seem like every college athlete is a millionaire because of NIL, many of these deals can actually be taken away from them the second they get injured.

In fact, many NIL agents say that their clients have no plan B if they were to get hurt, and there’s currently no rule against a school taking away that player’s scholarship or ending their NIL deal early because of it.

The Solution: That’s why a former college football player named Tyrre Burks created Players Health.

The company currently offers a basic liability insurance package for up to $25,000 that can be purchased by the athlete so that if they miss more than 25% of a season due to an injury during practice or a game, they can still cash in on the NIL and scholarship money they were promised.

According to Burks, these plans cost between 1-4% of an athlete’s combined earnings and scholarship, or in this case - between $250 and $1,000.

But that’s not even the craziest part.

Effects on NIL: NIL collectives can also purchase these insurance policies through Players Health if an athlete they paid gets injured or transfers.

Currently, if a NIL collective pays a kid $500,000 to come to their school, but he transfers before the end of the year, that kid can usually keep all the money while the school gets nothing.

But now Players Health is allowing those collectives to pay 4-10% of their total contract values so that they can get reimbursed if an athlete transfers early or gets injured while under contract.

Honestly, this seems like a win-win.

📉 Biggest Loser

The NFL is likely losing millions of dollars on this Brazil game… on purpose.

Background: Since 2007, the NFL has played at least one game internationally, starting first in London.

But even after ten years of playing at least one game per year in England, the NFL’s Head of International Development said the league was still losing money on every international game they hosted.

And it’s no different this year in Brazil.

Costs: For starters, the NFL is responsible for renting the stadium and getting it ready to host an American football game, which likely costs tens of millions of dollars.

Then there’s the added expense of flying over every team and league staff member, a total that often surpasses 500 people, all of whom expect first-class travel.

Interest in the NFL: Now, the idea is that these costs would be offset by:

• Local broadcast rights

• Ticket sales

• Sponsorships

But as the league found out in London, even if you sell out every game, that doesn’t mean the entire country is interested in football.

Just two years ago, fewer than 360,000 Brazilians watched at least 15 minutes of the Rams-Bengals Super Bowl (on a free channel and in a country of over 215 million).

Not to mention, that free channel (which will also be one of the channels airing the Packers-Eagles game) only sold commercials to 13 advertisers during that 2022 Super Bowl.

Silver Lining: But to the NFL, this is all actually good news because they know that if they invest the money to play at least one game here for the next ten years, then they could theoretically unlock hundreds of millions of new fans who will watch their sport.

They just have to be ok losing tens of millions of dollars per year in the meantime.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

How much would you pay to have an entire shoe 3D printed onto your foot in just six minutes?

Background: OnCloud has been working on this for the past four years, and the shoe is finally ready to hit the market this fall.

The technology is called Lightspray, where a foot mold is placed on a robotic arm as a plastic material is sprayed around it in one continuous stream.

This whole process takes just three minutes, and after another three minutes of painting, the shoe is ready to be worn instantly.

Why It Matters: A shoe's “upper” is typically the hardest to make as it often requires up to 100 different parts that are sourced, shipped, and assembled in various parts across the world.

But the Lightspray shoes can be entirely constructed with just five parts and in less than six minutes.

They can even be adjusted to have different:

• Breathability

• Stretch

• Support

Based on how far away the shoe is sprayed from or how thick the material is.

Although the final shoe tends to be so well made that athletes who have tested it have opted to wear it without socks.

But maybe the most interesting part is that fact that this entire shoe is technically recyclable. Its designer even says he envisions a day when runners:

1. Show up to a race

2. Get a custom shoe printed for them that day

3. Recycle the shoes at the end of the run

The Cloudboom Strike LS will go on sale later this fall, starting at $330.

⏱ In Other News

• Top Golf’s divorce is looming.

• Soccer star tears her meniscus, throwing out Nat’s first pitch.

• UCF’s new helmets were designed by pediatric hospital patients.

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

I was hoping you could help me figure something out in this poll. If the results are interesting, I’ll share them at the end of next week’s newsletter.