Business Report, April 13th, 2022.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are becoming a more popular revenue source for LSU student-athletes as well as with college athletes across the country.
The student-athletes can make money off of images, video clips and digitized cartoon graphics of themselves, says Taylor Jacobs, compliance coordinator for LSU athletics.
It’s something the department has tried to grasp and understand as best it can, Jacobs says, in order to make sure athletes are navigating the space correctly. LSU athletics hosted an NFT general information session with the football team a few months ago.
Game Coin, a Baton Rouge-based cryptocurrency company, signed NIL deals with 61 LSU student-athletes in March. The deals mean those athletes can mint as many NFTs as they want and sell them on Game Coin’s marketplace.
Besides working on navigating the NFT space, LSU athletics is also working on mentoring programs for athletes, Jacobs says, where players are paired up with business professionals whose positions coincide with their majors, minors and dream jobs.
“We’re trying to teach that this is all applicable,” Jacobs says, “not just for making NIL deals but for getting jobs.”
