🏅 Interview with Kevin Barefoot

Teaming up with

Hey there,

Today, we are thrilled to have Kevin Barefoot join us for an insightful conversation. As the Senior Vice President of Business Development at Teamworks, he's a big deal in the sports tech world. You know Teamworks, right? The guys behind the ultimate Operating System for Sports™.

Kevin has a knack for turning tech into top-notch athletic performance. He also has two decades of experience and a gift for spinning complex ideas into compelling stories.

In this interview, we talked Teamworks mission and service offerings, Kevin’s commitment to delivering measurable outcomes, and how Teamworks is redefining the athlete's journey with its cutting-edge tools. 

Now let’s get into it!

— Cole, Justin and Collin

Can you provide an overview of Teamworks and its mission?

Teamworks is an Operating System for Sports™ that powers over 6,000 sports organizations, including collegiate athletic departments, teams across all major professional leagues, and Olympic and National Governing Bodies. Our product suite provides specialized applications to support each stage of the athlete's lifecycle.

Over 200,000 student-athletes rely on Teamworks for centralized team communication and calendar management, empowering them to manage their athletic and academic responsibilities successfully. Teamworks partners with over 700 NCAA institutions, including every Autonomous Conference institution.

Our mission is simple: to empower student-athletes through the power of technology.

What specific services does Teamworks offer to support student-athletes with their NIL activities?

Teamworks Influencer is our athlete brand-building and NIL business management app, used by over 270 elite collegiate organizations. The mobile app is the centralized place for student-athletes to manage their brand and NIL activity. Specific functionality includes:

• NIL Disclosures: Report and track disclosures with instant communication with school compliance teams and licensing offices. 

• Content Delivery: Access and share content to social media channels to grow their digital brands. 

• Education: Curated educational content across categories such as financial literacy, taxes, social media best practices, and more. 

• Exchange: Student-athletes can find NIL opportunities with businesses, collectives, and fans. Communicate and facilitate payments through the app with automated payments, disclosures, and tax reporting. Payments are made with no additional platform fees. 

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Explain the NCAA NIL Assist program and Teamworks’ role.

Beginning August 1, 2024, the NCAA will launch NIL Assist, a platform designed to provide information to enhance the student-athlete NIL Experience. This platform provides the following:

Professional Service Provider Registry: helping student-athletes make informed decisions when selecting people to work with by collecting information and student-athlete reviews on service providers.

Data Dashboard: a dashboard that provides average and median data from reported NIL deals of $600+, providing student-athletes with transparent information about NIL trends for peers in similar conferences, sports, and positions.

NIL Educational Resources: a curation of robust educational resources from industry leaders to provide support and guidance on topics such as tax implications, contractual obligations, intellectual property, social media engagement, etc.   

How does Teamworks facilitate the disclosure of NIL activities to Division I schools and the NCAA?

Teamworks collaborated with the NCAA to build the NCAA NIL Assist. In order to power the data dashboard, we've built technology that enables schools to comply with the NCAA's reporting requirements. All schools, ones with or without Influencer, have a way to upload NIL transactions into Influencer and provide them to the de-identified data dashboard.

What NIL educational materials and insights does Teamworks provide?

Teamworks Influencer customers can access the Storyteller Playbook via the Influencer Mobile App. This resource is a comprehensive collection of educational content, primarily in short video formats, that offers student-athletes guidance on various aspects of NIL management. It covers topics such as tax implications, contractual obligations, intellectual property, and social media engagement, addressing common questions and concerns. With the collaboration with the NCAA NIL Assist, these resources will now be available to all student-athletes for no fee. 

What are the future plans for Teamworks in terms of expanding or enhancing its NIL services for NCAA student-athletes?

We recently announced Teamworks Wallet, a new technology that will become the standard for student-athlete payments, starting with NIL and expanding to rev share payments, per diem, and more. It's instant and free for student-athletes to use. We’ve started beta tests with a handful of collectives as a way to instantly transfer funds from collectives to student-athletes for NIL deals; with no lag time and no additional fees, the response has been phenomenal.

As Wallet gains traction among collectives, it establishes a valuable data foundation by managing millions of dollars in NIL transactions between collectives and student-athletes. This data uniquely positions Teamworks to expand our product offerings. We are planning to launch a compensation management and roster planning tool that will integrate seamlessly with Wallet and our existing ecosystem. These future tools aim to provide CFOs, Coaches, and Senior Administrators with enhanced transparency and a unified, streamlined experience.

All of the tools we offer today and the ones we're building for the future must be flexible and able to readily adapt to the changing landscape. As the rules, requirements, and needs for athletic departments change, we'll be prepared to pivot quickly to meet those needs"