New from Axios: The Money Game
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The Money Game, a fresh docuseries on the new world of "name, image and likeness" rights in college sports, co-produced by Axios Entertainment, dropped Tuesday on Prime Video.
Why it matters: Big-money deals around NIL are changing the lives of star NCAA athletes — and the series is a fascinating look at the scale of the business operation now embedded within the nation's biggest sports universities.
Driving the news: The six-part series, also co-produced by Campfire Studios and NBA hall-of-famer Shaquille O'Neal, brings you inside the 2022-2023 season at sports powerhouse LSU.
- If you're looking for star power, you'll get plenty of it: The series focuses on Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels, women's basketball star Angel Reese and one of the biggest NIL earners out there, gymnast Livvy Dunne.
- Equally eye-opening is the NIL operation itself — fully staffed at LSU and run like a business development office servicing every one of the school's 600+ athletes to help build their brands and source deals, big and small.
- Vast operations like this are now an essential part of recruiting for schools.
What they're saying: "You don't have to play the money game, but if you want to capitalize during your time as a student-athlete, you can do that," Taylor Jacobs, LSU's Associate Athletic Director of NIL Strategy Initiatives, says in the series.
The bottom line: Schools hoping to win don't really have a choice.
- NIL deals are fast becoming a $1.7 billion industry — and it's a money game they can't choose to ignore.
