Don’t call it a comeback

The Pac-12 may not have USC or UCLA for much longer… but what it does have, as of yesterday, is a new partnership with Twitter, NIL marketplace Opendorse, and sports tech startup Tempus Ex Machina that’ll enable some conference athletes to generate income by tweeting replays of their highlights.

📹➡️💰 Here’s how it works… During the 2022-23 sports season, Tempus Ex Machina will provide all Pac-12 football and men's and women's basketball players with a custom digital video after each game that includes their best plays and camera shots from various angles. Think: wedding photos, but for sports.

• When the players tweet these out, Twitter’s Amplify platform will populate the video with pre-roll ads, with the athletes receiving a payout + commission via Opendorse.

📸 Big picture: With this move, the Pac-12 becomes the first conference to provide athletes with the ability to monetize their own highlights… which may help 'em play catch-up on the recruiting front. 

• No conference team finished in the top ten of the 2022 football recruiting rankings, per 247Sports. And only USC, which is leaving for the Big Ten, ranked top-ten in the men's basketball recruiting rankings.

🤑 Zoom out: College athletes earned an estimated $917 million in the first year of name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments, which began July 1, 2021, per recent data from Opendorse. The NIL market is projected to produce $1.14 billion in NCAA athlete compensation over the next 12 months.

+One interesting NIL thing: When you subtract football, women’s sports are actually getting more deals than men’s sports.