A Triangle startup is turning top college athletes at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill into equity stakeholders using their name, image and likeness (NIL).
BOA Nutrition of Raleigh is one of the latest startups to take advantage of the fast-growing trend in college sports as student-athletes look to monetize their brand. The company on Thursday announced it's teaming up with a pair of Final Four veterans on an NIL deal: All-American forward Armando Bacot of North Carolina and rising Duke star Jeremy Roach.
The deals, which could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, include equity ownership positions for Roach and Bacot, similar to an arrangement between California-based Obsesh and N.C. State University cornerback Shyheim Battle.
BOA Nutrition offers an aerosolized hydration product targeted at endurance athletes, and it’s pushing out a new product intended to act as sports fuel, complete with carbs, B vitamins, caffeine and electrolytes. Its hydration product already has 15 college teams represented. The four-person company is close to finishing out its second funding round and is expanding outside of e-commerce to the retail space.
Jon Pritchett, CEO of BOA Nutrition, said the new NIL deals are a good bet for both parties.
“Being an early-stage company and always trying to treat cash as king and be careful with our cash outlay, we thought it was a unique way to get the attention of some elite athletes and create a compensation that was a combination of things,” he said. “When somebody becomes a shareholder, it just becomes a little different than cash. They start thinking more long term.”
In the case of Bacot and Roach, they each get stakes worth half a percent – “meaningful,” Pritchett said, when combined with cash and incentives. He estimates that, at current valuation, the stakes come to between $150,000 and $250,000 a year in total value.
In exchange, BOA Nutrition gets representation from well-known athletes who regularly compete in front of a national audience. For a consumer brand like BOA Nutrition, having high-profile people benefit from the product could be a key draw for a wider audience, Pritchett said.
He said both athletes use the product and have been doing so for some time. BOA Nutrition signed a previous deal – though not an equity arrangement – with Wendell Moore, a former Duke player currently with the Minnesota Timberwolves of the NBA. He was a teammate of Roach, and introduced him to the process.
