An international amateur athlete accepted a Division 1 offer on an F-1 visa, a six-figure NIL package lined up from a US collective, and a home-country federation that had never encountered the intersection. We made the structure work on both sides of the border.
The athlete had signed a National Letter of Intent with a Division 1 program and was preparing to enter the US on an F-1 student visa. A collective aligned with the program had a six-figure NIL package ready to execute the day she enrolled.
The F-1 visa did not permit the work the collective agreement described. Her home country's national federation classified any form of commercial compensation as a loss of amateur status for international competition, which would have blocked her from a major upcoming international event.
She needed both sides to work. The US NIL deal, and the federation's amateur classification back home.
We coordinated in parallel with US immigration counsel and with her home-country federation. On the US side, we restructured the NIL agreement so compensation would not trigger a visa-classification change, relying on a structure the US Citizenship and Immigration Services had acknowledged as compatible with F-1 status. On the federation side, we worked with her local counsel to confirm the compensation would be characterized in a way that preserved amateur status under the federation's operative bylaw language, and we obtained a written confirmation of that characterization before the agreement went live.
We formed a US Athlete LLC to receive the payments, with a dedicated US bank account and clean documentation for her home-country tax obligations. We built a one-page compliance calendar she and her family could use to track the upcoming international event, her academic eligibility, and the NIL contract cycle. We closed the package two weeks before the start of the academic year, with both US and home-country clearances in writing.
"Two sets of rules. Both had to say yes. Brandon made both of them say yes."
— Family, International Athlete
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