Will a California bill give players a slice of college sports’ $14bn pie?
California’s governor is on the verge of signing the Fair Pay to Play Act, which promises to end the exploitation of student-athletes by the multibillion-dollar college sports industry
This week LeBron James, Bernie Sanders and countless other heavy hitters lent their support to a monumental bill in California that, if passed, could forever alter the business of collegiate athletics and the entire American sports landscape. SB 206 (also known as the Fair Pay to Play Act) would permit collegiate athletes in the state, which include schools like USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley and Stanford, to seek payment for use of their name, image or likeness.
The NCAA, the governing body for college sports in America, has long prohibited its student-athletes from earning any semblance of profit associated with their skill set or name cache. Meanwhile college sports are a $14bn industry, and the NCAA reported a staggering $1.1bn in revenue generated last year, thanks in large part to the unpaid labor of its athletes.