TSL Pod on Triumph

Will Stewart interviewed Kevin and Robyn Jones (CEO and COO of Triumph NIL, respectively):

TL;DL: This episode is mostly a sales pitch for Triumph, aimed at explaining it fans who might be a little hesitant (either due to ignorance or dislike) of giving to NIL.

Here is my summary. As always, I recommend listening for full context.

On what is/why Triumph:

• Jones is adamant that Triumph is not a 'collective' and is actually a 'talent agency' - this means that professional marketers (like Jones) meet with the athlete, ask them questions about their interests, their likes and dislikes, etc and help create a personalized approach (my word, not Jones's) to NIL
• Triumph is a one stop shop (again, my word, not the Joneses') platform that centralizes everything NIL related for VT athletes and fans.
• From the athlete side, Triumph helps with personal branding (creation of logos, social media page advice, etc), Content Creation (help creating podcasts, youtube videos, social media posts, fan out reach etc), and matching athletes with fans/businesses
• From the fan and/or business perspective, it's an easy place to purchase services (social media shout outs, appearances, zoom interviews, etc), and it acts as a centralized hub to find anything related about a player (want to know everything Mike Vick is up to these days? Go to his Triumph page to find a link to his podcast, his clothing collection, etc)
• The recently launched platform (aka website) has been the plan since the beginning. The Joneses believe that it is simple, self explanatory, and accessible.
• The acquisition of Commonwealth NIL fit the vision for the one stop shop, making it a natural acquisition.
• Jones kept saying (paraphrasing) that 'all you have to do is go to our website, and you'll know exactly how NIL at VT works' - I think that's (a) an oversimplification and (b) not entirely true (I say that as a cynic that knows college football recruiting to be a dirty activity), BUT if you poke around the site for a few min, you get the gist of it

The Joneses believe that these three things (personalized approach, one stop shop, and a transparent platform that will engage fans and businesses) are something that no other university/collective is doing, and this creates Triumph's competitive advantage.

On (financial) Transparency

• One person on the staff (9 people) is getting paid. The goal is for Triumph to be a profitable business with all employees getting paid. They compared to an early stage startups where the founders don't take a salary in the beginning.
• When asked if (in the future) financial documents would be shared, the answer was 'probably not' - Triumph is a privately owned, for profit-company, and sharing financials is not something that privately owned, for-profit companies do.
• When asked how they decide whether to give money to 'revenue sport athletes' vs 'olympic athletes', Robyn said that fans and sponsors decide which players they want to engage with, and that defines where money goes.
• Some of the athletes with 'highest frequently' (I interpreted this as largest quantity of NIL deals) are non-revenue sport athletes

Other Miscellaneous Stuff

• Almost 600 VT athletes on the Triumph platform
• International Athletes can't take NIL for legal reasons, and Triumph is looking for (compliant) work arounds (eg; NIL deals in their home countries) - big deal for Soccer, Track, and Tennis.
• It's not specifically said, but it's implied that a lot of 'sponsors' were unsure of how to leverage NIL at first. Now, sponsors understand how it works, and they're starting to pay for overhead (which also implies that, at first, Triumph was covering overhead, presumably to get sponsors in the door).
• The 'Triumph Roster' has a huge social network reach. So some sponsors are contracting directly with Triumph in order to get a broader reach, which results in campaigns across sports teams.