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Key Takeaways Opendorse simplifies NIL deals, supporting 100,000+ athletes and nearly $1B in transactions.
The platform ensures compliance with NCAA, state, and professional athlete regulations across all deals.
Blake Lawrence launched Opendorse — now the leading NIL marketplace — from his Nebraska dorm room with cofounder Adi Kunalic, nearly a decade before most people even knew what “NIL” meant.
Today, the platform supports more than 100,000 athletes and has facilitated close to a billion dollars in name, image, and likeness transactions — a scale once unimaginable.
“In North America, only about 5,000 pro athletes earn money through endorsements,” Lawrence tells Entrepreneur. This includes everything from social media promotions to commercials and billboards.
“Opendorse stepped in to give those athletes one platform to manage everything: who’s paying them, what they’re getting paid for, their deliverables, contracts, tax documents and compliance.”
Opendorse began in 2012 as a tool Lawrence built to help his former Nebraska football teammate, Prince Amukamara, manage endorsements after he reached the NFL. Lawrence and cofounder Adi Kunalic created an app to automate the process and, essentially, “help him get paid to tweet.”
It didn’t take long for reality to set in.
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