NU partnering with NIL advisory firm Altius Sports | Football

The Athletic Department announced Tuesday a partnership with Altius Sports Partners, an NIL advisory and education firm, becoming the latest in a slew of schools to work with the group. 

“Their expertise, guidance and creativity will be an important component of Nebraska being a national leader in the area of name, image and likeness,” NU athletic director Trev Alberts said in a statement. 

A department news release announcing the partnership says Altius will help NU with strategic guidance on the school’s overall NIL policy and development of a corporate partnership strategy, among several other elements. 

The corporate partnership strategy will be particularly interesting in the longer term, considering that schools cannot negotiate NIL opportunities directly for athletes at this point, but it is possible that a multimedia rights partner could be involved in some capacity. In fact, Alberts noted as much when discussing why a 12-year, up to $215 million MMR partnership with JMI Sports fell through at the last minute recently. 

“What we’re trying to figure out is, you think about the challenge with name, image and likeness, how that impacts your MMR partners, and we don’t want to unnecessarily create internal competition,” Alberts said. 

NU has other NIL-related partnerships in place, including with Lincoln-based Opendorse. The department also announced Saturday that it will be paying all scholarship athletes up to $5,980 per academic year for academic progress.

“We will not fall behind anybody nationally relative to the support and opportunities for young people to be successful in the classroom, on the field, monetizing NIL,” Alberts said Saturday. “That’s just who we are and we’ll do what it takes.” 

Many Husker athletes are also now represented and supported by Athlete Branding & Marketing, though as essentially an agency for players, ABM is not formally affiliated with the university itself.