In June 21, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court released a 45-page opinion allowing student-athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL). Three days later, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was the first governor to sign an executive order to allow NIL compensation for collegiate student-athletes in the commonwealth. Senate Bill 6 was codified into Kentucky state law in March.
Ryan Miller
By April, Athlete Advantage LLC was in full swing as a student-athlete representation agency. The Lexington-based company was founded by Ryan Miller, Ryan Maxwell and Rob Jackson. Miller owns Mellow Mushroom pizzeria near the University of Kentucky campus, among other business ventures. Maxwell is an attorney and in-house general counsel for Athlete Advantage. Jackson, a native Lexingtonian, is a former hip-hop artist with Arista Records. He is leading the creative and marketing teams at Athlete Advantage.
“It’s already over a billion-dollar industry,” Miller said of NIL representation. In forming the business, Miller looked at what student athletes would need from a company such as Athlete Advantage so they could concentrate on their sport and schoolwork. “If you’re not doing that stuff, then all this other stuff doesn’t matter,” Miller said.
Miller didn’t want to see a collegiate student-athlete “sit on the computer and negotiate back and forth with corporations,” he said. “We put a full 360 around our athletes to protect them.”
The team at Athlete Advantage includes lawyers, accountants, financial advisers and mental health professionals, along with inhouse divisions for sales and marketing, production and branding. “We’re a local company doing things nationally,” Miller said. “We see it through from A to Z.”
Building a brand for any student-athlete might involve setting up an LLC, which provides a layer of protection when conducting business, Miller said. “The average deal for NIL is only around $1,000,” he said. “Our players are able to get, on average, usually three to five times that.”
Athlete Advantage can also manage in-house marketing and production for social media, commercials and photo shoots. A logo is created and trademarked so that the student-athlete owns it outright. “That’s theirs when they move on,” Miller said.
Ryan Maxwell
Athlete Advantage doesn’t represent professional athletes. “Only collegiate athletes, and high school athletes who are allowed to be in that space,” Miller said. California, for example, is one of a few states allowing high school students to participate in NIL.
“The rules are different everywhere,” Miller said. “Our ‘north’ as a company is always protecting the kids. We are well versed with every state’s rules and regulations to assure proper compliance.”
In addition to representing individual student-athletes, Athlete Advantage educates families and universities about the ins and outs of signing endorsement contracts and tax implications, among other considerations. Student-athletes also won’t find any “in perpetuity” clauses buried in fi ne print within an Athlete Advantage agreement.
Attorneys from Lexington-based fi rm Mc- Brayer “looked at all the issues in the history of the NCAA,” Miller said. “Then we put up our own additional guardrails.”
Every state has its own set of rules. “Conferences are starting to try to create their own rules; different universities are now creating their own set of rules,” Miller said. “If you don’t have a legal team that understands what is going on at every school and every state, it’s the wild, wild West.”
“We built our company out as ‘protection first’ for the student-athlete, which trickles down to protecting the programs in the universities that we work with,” he said. “We need to protect the student-athlete; we need to protect the university and the programs for these endorsement potential deals, but we also have to make sure that there is a massive benefit for the businesses and companies.”
Athlete Advantage represents student-athletes from coast to coast, including the University of Southern California, University of Georgia, Texas A&M and the University of Kentucky.
Rob Jackson
The company’s roster of student-athletes includes Brenden Rice, wide receiver for USC and son of Super Bowl XXIII MVP Jerry Rice. “What mattered to them [the Rice family] was that we were protecting his eligibility,” Miller said.
UK quarterback Will Levis is an Athlete Advantage client, endorsing War of Will, a Thoroughbred stallion standing at Claiborne Farm. “That deal went global,” Miller said. “It was picked up around the world in every publication from ESPN to Sports Illustrated to Golf Digest to places in Korea and throughout Europe.”
In September, DePaul University in Chicago announced a partnership with Athlete Advantage for its student-athletes. DeWayne Peevy, former deputy athletics director at UK, is the director of athletics at DePaul. “It is one of the fi rst deals like it in the nation,” Miller said.
A former athlete himself, Miller played football at Marshall University in West Virginia. He transferred to UK in the spring of 1996 to play under coach Bill Curry, but due to two knee surgeries he had to “wake up very quickly and figure out what I was going to do with my life.” He pursued a business degree and then opened Mellow Mushroom.
“Today, this one is my baby,” Miller said of Athlete Advantage. “It’s the most important thing I do, seven days a week from morning to night. We’ve been growing by leaps and bounds weekly, but we’re still a small group that are just trying to do things the right way.”