‘Pay for play’ in-season college basketball tournament reportedly launching in 2024-25

A new in-season men’s college basketball tournament — called “Players Era” — will reportedly launch this upcoming fall that will offer participating teams up to $2 million total in name, image, and likeness deals.

According to a report from Front Office Sports, the in-season tournament will take place during the upcoming 2024-25 college basketball season and feature 8 teams. Each school will receive $1 million in NIL funds for participating. The winning team will be “eligible” to earn another $1 million.

The report states that funds will be distributed to collectives, boosters, or other NIL entities, and the coaches and teams will be able to distribute that money however they see fit. The only stipulation is the money be distributed to participating players.

Players Era will take place at MGM Arena in Las Vegas, with 8 teams set to participate during the 2024-25 season before expanding to 16 teams during the 2025-26 season.

According to FOS, tournament organizers have held discussions with Alabama, Duke, FAU, Houston, Kansas, Oregon, San Diego State, St. John’s, Syracuse, and Virginia about participating. The event has not yet secured distribution, but it has held discussions with possible linear and streaming partners.

The College Basketball Invitational offered NIL agreements with participating teams a year ago. The winning school received $25,000, while the runner-up earned $10,000 and each semifinal loser made $2,500.

This new tournament will guarantee a 7-figure sum to each participating team, which promises to blur the already-hazy line between legal NIL agreements and still-banned pay-for-play setups. It’s a venture that represents a first-of-its-kind move in college basketball, and it comes at a time when NIL regulation at the NCAA level has been ground to a halt via judicial intervention.

Late last month, in a letter sent to member schools by NCAA president Charlie Baker, the organization said it was temporarily pausing existing investigations and would not open new ones into NIL-based recruiting violations.

That move was in response to a district judge’s ruling that the NCAA was violating antitrust law by prohibiting collectives from discussing NIL deals with prospective student-athletes during the recruiting process.

Baker, a proponent of NIL at its core, pitched a groundbreaking proposal in December that would create a new NCAA subdivision at the top of college athletics where participating schools would commit to directly paying their athletes on top of athletic scholarships by way of a trust fund.

He also suggested D1 schools bring name, image, and likeness compensation for their athletes in-house through group licensing and remove limits on educational benefits schools can provide for athletes.

In January, Baker appeared before a House subcommittee to discuss federal regulation

within the collegiate NIL space.

The 2023-24 college basketball regular season is coming to a close this weekend. The ACC Tournament and other conference tourneys begin play next week, and then the field will be set for the NCAA Tournament. If more midseason tournaments began offering guaranteed NIL compensation for participating teams, would schools begin to ask the same of the NCAA Tournament? It’s a question worth asking.