NIL33: the record college sports needs.
College athletes can now be paid. Schools can pay them directly. Deals above a line go to a clearinghouse. Junior-college and high-school deals follow the athlete. None of it came with a record anyone outside the deal can check. NIL33 is that record.
1. Summary
Since 2020 every level of college sport has allowed athletes to be paid for their name, image and likeness: the NAIA first, then the NJCAA and all three NCAA divisions in 2021, with California's community colleges under their own state law. In June 2025 the House settlement let Division I schools pay athletes directly and sent every third-party deal of $600 or more through a clearinghouse with a five-business-day clock. In 2025 the College Sports Commission added that deals made in high school or junior college must be reported within 14 days of enrolling at a Division I school. There is still no federal law.
What none of this produced is a record. A parent cannot see what their child signed. A compliance office cannot see a deal until the athlete remembers to report it. A junior-college athlete arrives at a university with nothing to hand over. A brand cannot tell a real profile from a fake one. The marketplaces that broker deals are not neutral about the deals they broker.
NIL33 is a record, not a marketplace. Each agreement is signed against a fixed text, with a flat fee or none and the disclosure that applies; the record is fingerprinted and chained to the one before it; a countersignature publishes a ledger entry; a receipt verifies live; a report pack turns the whole thing into the document set the clearinghouse or the compliance office wants. Anyone can check any of it without asking us. We take no commission and no share of any deal.
2. The problem
People say "NIL law" as if there were one. There are four layers and a deal has to clear all of them: federal (no statute, but the Federal Trade Commission's endorsement rules bind every paid post), the association (the House settlement, the clearinghouse and the College Sports Commission for Division I; the interim policy for Divisions II and III; the NAIA and NJCAA bylaws; the 3C2A in California), the state (Georgia's college statute expired on June 30, 2025 and was not re-enacted; the 2026 high-school bill passed the House 171-0 and died in the Senate), and the school's own policy.
The money moved first. Division I schools may share about $20.5 million per school in 2025-26. NJCAA athletes have earned over $500,000 through the association's marketplace partner, averaging $310 per deal. Most of these deals are small, local and frequent, which is exactly the kind of deal nobody documents.
The person at the table with the least experience reading contracts is the athlete, and for a high-school or junior-college athlete it is often a parent with a deadline. The traditional answer, another agent, another collective, another percentage, adds a cost without adding a record.
3. The answer: a record anyone can check
Every deal on the record. Every dollar disclosed. Nothing anyone has to take on faith.
NIL33 has six layers, each with a public address and an honest label saying whether it is running today (the transparency stack):
- A public ledger. Every Champion (paid, disclosed) and Ambassador (unpaid, disclosed), what they endorse, the compensation type and the disclosure used. Readable as a page and as an open machine-readable record.
- Signed records with a chain. Each agreement is signed against a versioned text. The record stores the text's fingerprint and a link to the previous record, so nothing can be altered or back-dated without breaking the chain. A receipt page recomputes it live.
- Signed verification for schools and brands. Know Your Athlete issues a signed statement about a profile: who holds authority for a minor, whether the profile has been claimed, what the ledger says. The signing key is published under the domain, so a school verifies the statement with no call to us.
- Metered access for software. The same records, readable by a platform or compliance tool per request, with a receipt. The free tier is rate-limited.
- A publicly registered payee. The account that receives payment for metered access is registered in a permanent public registry with a public reputation record.
- Independent timestamping of agreements (designed, not switched on).
4. How a deal moves through NIL33
Before any of this, the deal card (Contract Studio) puts the whole deal on one page: fixed pay, exact deliverables, a usage window, a real exit. Contract Shield reads any pasted contract in the browser and flags the clauses that hurt athletes most: terms over twelve months, broad exclusivity, automatic renewal, assignment of future earnings, blanket power of attorney, intermediary fees above twenty percent. A flag blocks self-service signing and routes the athlete to a parent, a lawyer or the compliance office.
5. Who does what
| Role | What they do on NIL33 | What they cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Athlete | Apply, sign, claim the profile, keep the receipt, build the report pack | Be paid a commission or a share; be published before countersignature |
| Parent or guardian | Sign first for anyone under eighteen; hold authority on the profile | Be bypassed |
| School or program | Organization profile, roster code, Ambassador program, compliance workspace, receive report packs | Promise third-party payments; use NIL33 as a substitute for its compliance office |
| Brand | Verified entity profile, fixed-fee deal card, sign, receive deliverables and the usage rights the card states | Pay for performance, school choice or outcomes |
| Agent or representative | Time-limited authority from the athlete; upload proposed terms | Bind an athlete; take an undisclosed fee |
| Platform or compliance tool | Read the ledger and verification statements; metered access; planned import and export | Alter a record |
| NIL33 (UnyKorn LLC) | Provide the agreement text, countersign, publish, keep the record honest | Broker deals, take a percentage, give legal advice |
6. Rules by level
| Level | Rule in force | Clock | What NIL33 hands the athlete |
|---|---|---|---|
| NCAA Division I | House settlement (June 6, 2025); NIL Go clearinghouse; College Sports Commission; interim policy | Five business days for a third-party deal of $600 or more | Report pack |
| Junior college or high school → Division I | College Sports Commission rules | 14 days after enrollment, or before the first game | Report pack with the enrollment date |
| NCAA Divisions II and III | Interim policy (June 30, 2021); school policy; no clearinghouse | Per school | Ledger entry and receipt |
| NAIA | October 2020 legislation; school policy | Per school | Ledger entry and receipt |
| NJCAA | June 2021 bylaw; state law; no conflict with college sponsorships; Opendorse marketplace | None until transfer | Ledger entry and receipt that travel |
| California community colleges (3C2A) | Bylaw 1.1.6; SB 26 | 14 days before committing; changes within 14 days | Deal card as the disclosure |
| High school (Georgia) | GHSA Appendix N only; no statute | None | Guardian-signed agreement; no school marks or facilities |
Dated and sourced row by row on the rules page. Northwest Athletic Conference rules are not yet read and are marked UNVERIFIED there.
7. What is real today
| Component | State | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Champions and Ambassadors, agreement texts, rules | real | Public documents; countersignature before publication |
| Public ledger, page and open record | real | Refreshed every minute |
| Electronic signing with chain and live receipt | real | Design in ADR-0005; counsel review of the texts is open (F-28) |
| Claimed profiles | real | Nothing is bought, sold or moved |
| Deal card, Contract Shield, Bill of Rights, Safety Desk, compliance workspace | real | Browser tools; counsel review open (F-32) |
| Report pack | real | Browser-only; reads the public record |
| Know Your Athlete | partial | Government-ID step waits on a vendor (F-30); no profile is "KYA Verified" yet |
| Metered access for software | partial | Access real; payment path configured, not yet proven by a published settled request (F-48) |
| Independent timestamping of agreements | gated | Pending decision F-21 |
| Platform import and export | planned | Designed in the developer docs |
| Fair-value evidence for the clearinghouse review | planned | Research only; no valuation is published until calibrated on real deals |
8. Money, plainly
A Champion is paid a flat fee for a term, set in the agreement and disclosed on the ledger. An Ambassador is paid nothing and the ledger says so. Introducing another athlete who signs earns a capped, flat honorarium that is also on the ledger. NIL33 never takes a commission, a percentage of a deal, or anything tied to an athlete's performance, school choice or outcome. No price for schools or programs is published yet; 2026 pilots are arranged directly, and whatever the price is, it is flat.
How payments on a deal are handled is set out in each agreement. UnyKorn LLC is not a bank, a broker-dealer, a marketplace, an agent or a licensed adviser, and sells no investments.
9. For the platforms and the groups already in NIL
Marketplaces, disclosure vendors, collectives and compliance platforms already hold most of the deal flow. NIL33 does not ask any of them to change. It asks to be the record underneath: a signed, chained, publicly checkable entry per deal, with the clock computed, that a school can accept from any source. Import of existing disclosures with the athlete's consent, and export in the shape a clearinghouse accepts, are designed and documented on the developer page. A platform that wants to pilot it should write to hello@nil33.com.
10. Limits
- This paper and the site are not legal advice. The rules pages are sourced and dated; a real question goes to counsel.
- NIL33 does not find or broker deals, does not promise eligibility or any outcome, and is not a substitute for a school's compliance office.
- Imagery on the site is original and illustrative; no real athlete is depicted, and nobody is endorsing anything until their countersigned agreement is on the ledger.
- Every number and date on the site carries a source or the word UNVERIFIED. Corrections are published.
11. Roadmap
- School and two-year pilots (now): organization profiles, roster codes, the compliance workspace, the report pack.
- Rules data by state: the state-law and institution-rule model populated row by row with sources and dates, with an honest coverage count.
- Platform import and export: consented import of existing disclosures; export in the clearinghouse's shape.
- Fair-value evidence pack: a deterministic, explainable set of inputs and comparables an athlete can attach to a clearinghouse review. Research until calibrated; no public valuation before then.
- Brand fit on Know Your Athlete: an athlete-written list of what they are into, shown to verified brands only with consent, never sold, so deals and product fit the person; in-kind compensation disclosed on the ledger.
- Identity verification vendor for Know Your Athlete; counsel review of the agreement texts and the athlete-protection pages.
- Independent timestamping of agreements, after the pending decision.
12. Who operates NIL33
UnyKorn LLC, a Wyoming company formed July 1, 2026, builds and runs the software behind NIL33: the ledger, the signing flow, Know Your Athlete, verification for schools and brands, and the report pack. It also operates the youth side, Live the Dream Athletics, where the athlete record begins. Software, records and services; not a bank, broker-dealer, marketplace, agent or licensed adviser. About NIL33.
13. Sources
College Sports Commission rules as summarised by NIL Newsstand, October 30, 2025 · Congressional Research Service LSB11349 (House v. NCAA) · NCAA interim policy, June 30, 2021 · NJCAA releases of June 30, 2021 and April 8, 2026 · MiraCosta College NIL policy (3C2A bylaw 1.1.6, SB 26) and the CCCAA constitution · 16 CFR Part 255 (FTC Endorsement Guides, revised June 29, 2023) · Georgia HB 617 as passed; LegiScan GA HB 383 · GHSA Appendix N · Congress.gov H.R. 4312 · industry summaries of the NAIA October 2020 legislation (handbook citation pending). Row-by-row citations: the rules page and the timeline.