As Clemson starts to navigate the revenue-sharing era, the school opted to “sunset” it’s NIL collective, 110 Society, athletics director Graham Neff confirmed this week. Instead, the plan is to shift its focus toward revenue generation through Clemson Ventures. Neff broke down Clemson’s approach to the post-House v. NCAA settlement landscape amid a wave of […]
As Clemson starts to navigate the revenue-sharing era, the school opted to “sunset” it’s NIL collective, 110 Society, athletics director Graham Neff confirmed this week. Instead, the plan is to shift its focus toward revenue generation through Clemson Ventures.
Neff broke down Clemson’s approach to the post-House v. NCAA settlement landscape amid a wave of change across college sports. Collectives have especially been front-and-center after the College Sports Commission issued initial guidance that said they had to meet a “valid business purpose” requirement. The CSC later issued new guidance saying it would treat collectives as a typical business so long as they meet those parameters.
Still, Clemson is shutting down 110 Society, Neff told reporters. The plan is to work closer with Clemson Ventures, the school’s full-service marketing agency, to help facilitate NIL deals. But given the ever-changing world, Neff said discussions took place about possibly restoring the collective if necessary.
“We’ve certainly talked about it,” Neff said. “We have to have optionality. The 110 Society – which, we had a transition within our collective environment over the couple years. It was Tiger Impact, which served a really critical role … as we first started navigating the NIL landscape. That transition to 110 Society, obviously, IPTAY is stitched into some of that communication and strategy. What we know now is that NIL, while still certainly in effect, is intended to look very differently. That’s what the settlement and the guidance from CSC, etc., suggests.
“We are leaning into, heavily, what the intention and the regulations around that are, specifically through Clemson Ventures. While … being nimble and what that looks like for our environment – commercial environment, collective environment or otherwise – [it] certainly would be on the table. We’re not going to be caught flat-footed, if that’s a direction we need to transition.”
Graham Neff: 110 Society ‘served an incredible purpose’
As schools braced for the House settlement, which ushered in the revenue-sharing era, some opted to shut down their collectives. Others, however, kept them in place as part of an approach to navigate “over-the-cap” opportunities. Schools can directly share up to $20.5 million with athletes through rev-share, but third-party deals – which require vetting from the NIL Go clearinghouse if worth more than $600 – do not have a cap.
Graham Neff noted the different approaches by school, but also said collectives are starting to take on a different role. That’s where Clemson Ventures and the Clemson+ content platform come into play.
“I think if you look at the landscape, there’s a lot of different ways to go about it,” Neff said of collectives’ roles. “There are a lot of schools like us that have maybe ‘sunset’ or closing their prior collective. There’s some schools that are keeping those, some schools that really lean into their third-party multimedia rights provider. We’re incredibly unique with the play with Clemson Ventures. That being said, how we think about it, one, the intention of the House case settlement and with the College Sports Commission is that the role of collectives is going to look different. While they still certainly can exist – and again, there certainly are those that are going to function – the role for them to facilitate commercial NIL deals is the differentiator.
“So I think for us, whereas 110 Society, which served an incredible purpose in tandem with IPTAY and with our boosters to really generate revenues from a booster fundraising standpoint, that looks very different now. So for us to lean in and facilitate from a commercial NIL business standpoint, that best aligns with Clemson Ventures. And the fact that that’s an in-house nature for us and that’s an entity that already engages their role is to generate revenue from a commercial standpoint, businesses and sponsorship, so to speak. The ability for us to have underneath Clemson Ventures an agency type role and facilitation for commercial NIL is the unique strategy. So yes, our ability to flow deals through Clemson Ventures is how we’re going about it.”
Category: General Sports
