A rising college football starter, a school revenue-share license at $400,000, a marketing representation agreement with a $168,000 upfront advance, and a collective content deal assigning his name, image, and likeness to a third-party platform. We read all three against each other and rewrote the ones that could not stand alone.
Malo signed with a Power Four program out of high school and became a starter in his first season. Within a single thirty-day window, three separate NIL agreements landed on the family's desk: a revenue-share license agreement with the university at $400,000, a marketing representation agreement with a private agency promising a $168,000 upfront advance, and a content services agreement with a collective tied to the school.
Each one was presented as standard. None of them were. The school license waived his right to inspect or approve any use of his likeness and granted a fully assignable, fully sublicensable, royalty-free grant. The marketing representation agreement auto-renewed every year unless he terminated in writing and contained a $168,000 repayment obligation if he missed pre-scheduled appearances for any reason, including academics or injury. The collective agreement treated his contributions as work made for hire and claimed perpetual rights in the content.
Three agreements. Three different counterparties. Stacked on top of each other, they would have handed over control of his name, image, and likeness on terms he could not realistically meet.
We read all three agreements against each other in a single pass. We treated the school license as the baseline, isolated every clause in the other two that conflicted with it, and redlined each agreement clause-by-clause. On the school license, we negotiated a good-faith objection procedure to give Malo the ability to flag uses he believed were damaging to his personal brand. On the marketing representation agreement, we eliminated the automatic commission from brand payments to Malo directly, capped the repayment obligation to circumstances actually within his control, and required all deals to be authorized in writing before signing. On the collective agreement, we converted the perpetual content rights to a fixed-term license that expired when his eligibility ended, added a 90-day wind-down period rather than a permanent assignment, and required mutually-agreed rescheduling when academic or athletic obligations conflicted.
We routed all three payment streams through his Athlete LLC. We drafted a one-page matrix he and his family could use to evaluate any future offer against the three agreements already in place. We built in category-exclusivity tracking so a future shoe or apparel deal would not breach any of the three.
"Everyone told me these were standard. Brandon showed me what standard actually should have looked like."
— Malo
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