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Promoting Inclusiveness and Fairness through NFTs: The Case of Student-Athletes and NILs

Carvalho, A., Zavolokina, L., Bhunia, S., Chaudhary, M., & Yoganathan, N.

Recent regulatory changes have enabled NCAA student-athletes to proft from their name, image, and likeness (NIL), departing from previous policies requiring those athletes to maintain their amateur status. How- ever, despite the changes, it is unlikely that all the approximately 500,000 NCAA student-athletes will proft from NIL contracts. Within this context, we study how to design a fair and inclusive solution that may help all student-athletes se- cure NIL fnancial resources. Following a design science approach, we defne design re- quirements after interviewing student-athletes. Subsequently, we derive three design principles: inclusiveness, fairness, and transparency. Thereafter, we suggest a blockchain-based artifact that satisfes all design principles. Our idea lies in designing collectibles as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that pay diferent roy- alties whenever a transaction (purchase or exchange) happens in diferent markets (primary or secondary). Finally, we evaluate our solution by discussing its features with current student-athletes.

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