| How much do Marquette players make in NIL?Paint Touches

No idea, but thanks to the fact that Marquette’s primary source of NIL comes from the third-party collective Be The Difference Nil, and as it’s a charitable organization that has to report to the IRS, we get a great look at how much money, generally speaking, Marquette’s basketball programs receive in NIL. *(If you want to get into the nitty gritty, I’ll outline a bit more of how it works at the asterisk).

Revenue: $2,112,451

In the 2023 calendar year, Be the Difference Nil reported it took in $2,112,451, up 128% from 2002. Of that $2.1M, all but $244 came from external contributions, or donations from individuals and groups.

Expenses: $1,304,735

In the 2023 calendar year, BTD reported $1,304,735 in expenses, up 239% from 2022. When we add up the line items listed in the tax filing, we can reasonably assume $1.128M went directly to players of that $1.3M.

What Does This Mean?

Now, of course, that doesn’t mean we can just divide that player total by 12 or 13 and call it a day. BTD NIL works with both the men’s and women’s team, and the distribution to each team isn’t public. But even more importantly, the tax filing is a look at the 2023 calendar year, which encompasses 2 basketball seasons, the end of the 2023 season and the start of the 2024 season. That means a player like OMax Prosper would have gotten a distribution in 2023, but only in those first few months, not the full year like Tyler Kolek or Kam Jones.

All of this is to say, while we can say with confidence that BTD distributed over $1M in NIL funds to Marquette players in the 2023 calendar year, we don’t know much else about it.

How Does This Stack Up In The Big East?

While we don’t have any data on the 9 other collectives across 8 teams that are private entities and not charitable organizations, hence no IRS filings, we do have 4 others to be able to compare against.

Marquette’s collective sits 2nd in the conference for both revenue and spend, with a significant gap between BTD and Xavier’s collective.

Here’s a list of the other collectives, should anyone be interested.

How Does This Stack Up Nationally?

While it’s very difficult to measure basketball first/only collectives against P4 collectives with giant football team considerations, the NCAA did release direct (anonymized) player amounts reported via its system and has a live, updating dashboard.

For those that want to poke around, here is the data: https://nilassist.ncaa.org/data-dashboard/.

For those looking at general benchmarks, here’s what the all-sport breakout looks like:

And here is what the P4 breakout for basketball looks like:

So the average P4 basketball player has reported a little over $170K, and that’s the barometer for Marquette and other Big East schools.

Conclusion

All in all, despite a lack of clear and direct answers, it’s safe to say that Marquette’s NIL payments put it on par, if not ahead of most schools. Sure, there are no headliners with reported 7-digit payments, but Shaka’s retention strategy would not work with below-average funding, no matter how strong the culture is.

As is the case with most things financial, Marquette and its charitable donors have provided a tremendous platform for on-court success.

Additional NIL Stuff

* Basically, since the NCAA opened the doors (via lawsuits it lost) on players being able to profit off of their name, image and likeness (NIL), one of the most popular ways to get money into players’ hands has been through a third party collective. The collective (just a fancy name for a company) that has no direct affiliation with the school, will take money directly from people and companies, and then distribute it to players via different means.

Theoretically, this was meant to be a way for players to cash in on their popularity and marketability, not meant to be tied to their connection to a school or participation on a team, but from basically the first day, it became clear that the payments were then ends in and of themselves, the collectives were just the means by which schools could avoid NCAA investigation.

These collectives broke down into 2 separate tiers, the non-profits (like BTD) and the private entities. Non-profits were all the rage early on because donations could be claimed as tax deductions, much like funds going to universities and their athletic arms. However, the IRS began cracking down on these of late and has even rejected a few new applications, so it seems like this model may not be long for the modern NIL world.

Of course, this also coincides with the House settlement, which will allow direct revenue sharing from schools to players for the first time, starting the 2025 fall seasons.

And one more crucial point, everything I’ve mentioned about NIL to date has been in terms of payments from collectives, it doesn’t include any direct merch sales on the NIL store, or any direct deals the player may have struck with a restaurant or vendor, like we’ve seen multiple MU players promote. That’s a whole different beast, and one with even less clarity.

Finally, here is the link to the BTD 990 filling, should anyone with more tax experience want to dive in themselves.