Hey everybody, I’m Brian Clapp VP of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkinSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast…

Before we get into the stat line -- I want to whet your appetite for January podcasts. December continues to be the Best of 2020 -- this Wednesday, Tim Duncan Athletic Director for the University of New Orleans… a great guy and a great interview. 

For January, I’ve lined up multiple talent acquisition executives, a co-founder of one of the biggest sports tech companies ever, a global partnership activation manager in the NBA, a manager of inside sales in the NBA who is hiring staff and gearing up... January will be huge.

Also just a heads up - this Wednesday my good friend and former guest Chris Grosse, who is Associate Athletic Director for Marketing at Penn State has asked me to be part of a panel discussion on sports industry resume’s -- if you are interested in checking it out, connect with Chris on LinkedIn and he’ll share info with you.

So with that in mind let’s get into the stat line...

Alright, we’re taking a bit of a left turn with the stat line today, data as normal, but instead of highlighting three jobs, we’re doing to discuss a major news story that will change the future of the #sportsbiz. 

First the data…. Three data points helping you understand what’s happening in sports employment right now...

#1: 16,508 active sports jobs on WorkinSports.com the leading job board for the sports industry -- that is a decline of 1% from last week, a slight drop, but this is the time of year when orgs are gearing up for the new year, so no surprise here.

#2 -- we added 1508 jobs in the last week, that’s a decline of 10% week over week. 

#3 - which is still an average of 215 fresh new sports jobs every day of the week, which actually seems pretty good considering the time of year. Expect big bumps in January.

Ok, as I mentioned, instead of giving you three jobs that caught my eye this week, I want to discuss a major change happening in the world of sports that will fundamentally change our business moving forward and that includes jobs and opportunity. 

I try really hard not to speak to specific events, or newsy items because it makes the episode content dated and somewhat irrelevant in a month’s time… but this is important and represents a massive sea change in the industry.

We’re talking about Names, Images, and Likeness legislation.

Quick primer -- throughout my life and longer, student-athletes can’t make money off their name, image, and likenesses. They can’t hire agents and negotiate endorsement deals with sneaker, apparel, merchandise, video games or summer camps. They can’t do social media deals and rake in ad or sponsorship revenue. When it comes to athletes making money and leveraging their brand -- they can’t.  

BUT - schools can absolutely use a student-athletes name, image, and likeness to make money. So the school’s profit, but the student-athletes don’t.

Finally, this is changing.  

Now, this get’s tricky, and there are details and nuances I am going to leave out for this discussion. If you want to learn more, I suggest you visit sportico.com and check out the great write-up from my legal go-to guy Michael McCann.

We’re going to take a high-level stab at it, and really the point here isn’t just to keep you aware of changing t...