GLENDALE, Ariz. — Zach Edey is cleaning up on National Player of the Year awards, but losing out on significant NIL money.
The 7-foot-4 Purdue star is Canadian and thus unable to earn any NIL money in the U.S. International students aren’t allowed to earn NIL income due to F-1 visa regulations. Essentially, they cannot be paid to work while on a student visa.
“I hope they change it in the future,” Edey, who has Chinese heritage, said at the Final Four in response to a question from NJ Advance Media after being named both the Oscar Robertson and AP Player of the Year.
“I obviously have lost out on a lot of money this year.”
The same situation applied two years ago to another international player who was named National Player of the Year, Kentucky big man Oscar Tshiebwe of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
American women’s stars Caitlin Clark and Juju Watkins are in several national television commercials, and have significant earning power as the NCAA women’s tournament draws record numbers of viewers. NC State star DJ Burns has reportedly made close to $500,000 in NIL deals during March Madness so far.
Still, on Friday, ahead of the national semifinals, Daps, an NIL company partnering with Edey, dropped the release of 150 Edey trading cards that fans can bid on.
It was within NIL rules because it’s entirely passive income. Edey isn’t “working” in any capacity. He isn’t promoting it or signing anything (the cards are all unsigned) and the picture Daps used for the Instagram post was taken in December when Edey was in Toronto for Purdue’s game with Alabama (another Final Four team). He is just monetizing his NIL passively.
“When I’m back in Toronto, I’ll try to do some stuff,” Edey said. “Obviously, I can still do jersey sales and stuff while I’m here, that passive income stuff. It’s not like I can go film a commercial in West Lafayette.”
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Daps is owned by former Wayne Hills High School basketball standout Ryan Berger, who lives in Short Hills, N.J., and Jake Klores, a New York City resident who is the son of award-winning filmmaker Dan Klores.
It is a startup that’s building the technology that enables athletes to run their direct-to-fan businesses on their terms, while giving sports fans unique access to the athletes they love.
On the Daps app, fans do things like bid live during games on the game-worn jersey or sneakers players are wearing, participate in limited edition autograph drops created in collaboration with card artists, allowing fans to get things like a personalized video message, a 5-minute FaceTime, or an Instagram follow.
They bill it as “Shopify” for athletes.
Previous drops on Daps have included Knicks star Julius Randle, Warriors wing Jonathan Kuminga, and Dylan Harper, the McDonald’s All-American guard from Don Bosco Prep who is committed to Rutgers.
At the Final Four, the company is working with Edey, Burns, Alabama’s Mark Sears, Purdue’s Braden Smith and UConn’s Alex Karaban, among others.
“It’s a shame that Zach isn’t able to actively monetize his NIL right now like his peers from the United States are,” Klores told NJ Advance Media. “This is a time period during which he has earned a particularly high degree of awareness and attention around him, so we were excited to find a way to help him monetize his NIL passively, through an unsigned card drop commemorating his Final Four run.”
Jason Belzer, a graduate of Rutgers University and Rutgers Law School who is the chief executive of Student Athlete NIL, an agency that works with brands doing campaigns for student-athletes, says eventually the government has the opportunity to change the current NIL rules.
“The challenge is that the government works slow and nobody could foresee this opportunity that was going to come from NIL,” he said. “They just need to retool the system so these kids [aren’t] at a disadvantage.”
Purdue coach Matt Painter says there need to be some guidelines around NIL.
“They have to have a clear definition of what name, image and likeness is,” he said.
“There’s a lot of money generated through what they’re doing. Name, image and likeness needed to happen. We just got to get some guardrails around it to be able to get there.”
For Edey, he’ll have to wait for the NBA Draft for his big payday.
“I hope they change it in the future,” Edey said of NIL.
“I understand kind of the legal process, it takes a while. It’s not like it’s an NCAA rule, it’s an American law. Anytime you try to go change that, I understand it takes a while.”
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Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media. You may follow him on Twitter @AdamZagoria and check out his Website at ZAGSBLOG.com.