NEW NIL BILL PUSHES ATHLETES’ RIGHTS, INCLUDING GROUP LICENSING

By Michael Mccann

The crowded world of name, image and likeness (NIL) bills in Congress expanded on Wednesday as U.S. Rep. and former Georgetown University volleyball player Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) reintroduced an NIL bill. 

The College Athlete Economic Freedom Act emphasizes the rights and economic interests of college athletes.

Among other features, the bill contemplates: 

The bill arrives on the heels of an NIL bill introduced on Tuesday by U.S. Senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and Joe Manchin (D-W. Va). Their bill, dubbed the Protecting Athletes, Schools, and Sports Act of 2023, envisions a more restrictive landscape for athletes’ NIL opportunities and a limitation on the transfer portal.

Trahan and Murphy aren’t new to NIL. They have been influential voices on college sports reforms, and bothparticipated in Sportico’s NIL Era event.

However, as noted in Sportico’s coverage of other NIL bills, this bill and all others like it face difficult odds of securing passage. To date, no NIL bill has advanced out of committee despite many initially attracting favorable media coverage and trending on social media.

Congress is also about to enter an election season where many members will be away and focused on reelection and other political objectives. Some members also prefer that the NCAA figure out a way of addressing NIL that is both effective and lawful, and for the federal government to not intervene. 

But each bill advances the broader discussion on how NIL, which with collectives and state laws nowlimiting the NCAA’s ability to enforce membership rules, has morphed to some degree into pay-for-play. 

The inclusion of group licensing and media rights in the bill proposed by Trahan and Murphy is particularly noteworthy. Group licensing has been made more difficult by the fact that college athletes are not—yet—classified as employees, which means they cannot form a union under federal labor law. They can, however, form trade associations or nonprofits that negotiate licenses or engage with companies that provide group licensing services. The bill could accelerate the rate at which group licensing becomes a standard practice for college athletes. 

The bill also relates to an important federal litigation in California, In Re College Athlete NIL Litigation. College athletes are suing the NCAA and the Power Five conferences over broadcasting revenue they believe they are owed under antitrust law. There is also litigation over Electronic Arts’ plan to pay college football players $500 to appear in the next iteration of the company’s college football video game.

“Rather than trying to turn back the clock,” Trahan said in a statement, her and Murphy’s bill “addresses real issues in the current NIL landscape by strengthening athletes’ rights, addressing gender disparities in collectives and closing the international athlete loophole.”

Murphy voiced a similar sentiment in stating “this legislation would enshrine unrestricted NIL rights into federal law and ensure athletes are treated fairly and start getting their fair share.”