JMI Sports president explains partnership with Kentucky for NIL management

The University of Kentucky’s NIL partnership with JMI Sports has come under the microscope lately. As the school has decided to move its collective in-house along with creating the Champions Blue, LLC. to manage the athletic department as a separate business entity, many have had questions about how this process all works and how players will get deals done in the new world to bolster recruiting. We’re starting to get some more transparency from all parties involved.

In a recent episode of the “Behind the Blue Podcast“, Kentucky executive vice president for finance Eric Monday sat down with Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart and JMI Sports Properties president Paul Archey to discuss the new space in college athletics that includes revenue-sharing from the university and NIL deals with JMI to help student-athletes get paid in this new world order via the BBNIL suite after the House settlement was passed. Archey opened up on what JMI’s role is in this entire process.

This is what he said.

“BBNIL is a collaboration between us as their multimedia rights partner and the university athletic department to create this structure in which we can provide opportunities — revenue and marketing opportunities for student-athletes,” Archey explained. “From both with our current partners, outside of our current partners, but not just revenue and marketing, but other services to assist them in the NIL Go portal to get that right, to create content, to build their brand. So it’s not just about how much revenue, it’s about the other services that we can combine.”

“We’ve been extremely lucky but also successful in being able to go to those partners as part of the BBNIL solution and generate new NIL dollars and opportunities for these athletes. So the approach is holistic. It’s combined, like I said, a collaboration. It’s collective. It’s about driving revenue, marketing opportunities and then other services for the student athletes.”

JMI essentially works as a tag team partner with the Kentucky athletic department to get student-athletes paid as a supplement to the rev-share salary cap. The multimedia rights holder has longstanding relationships with Paul Miller Ford, Kentucky Farm Bureau, Central Bank, and many other corporate companies. The goal is to get deals done with Kentucky athletes through all of these JMI partners, but Archey did point out that deals can be done outside of JMI. There have been a lot of questions about this. Archey says that there have been plenty of deals brokered outside of the UK and JMI structure.

“We would love student-athletes to always do business with our partners, but there is no restriction. I think there’s more than the last number I saw,” Archey said. “We’ve done more than 250 — student-athletes have done more than 250 deals outside of BBNIL. They’ve brought their own deals.”

There are still a lot of questions remaining but both the University of Kentucky and JMI are attempting to be transparent as they transition through this new process. Those two are working hand in hand to help coaching staffs throughout the athletic department recruit and build the best rosters possible.