UConn NIL collective Bleeding Blue for Good to shut down

PHOTO | UCONN ATHLETICS UConn Athletics Director David Benedict celebrates the men’s basketball team’s 2024 national championship. Amid the changing landscape of college sports, he expects the NCAA to move toward a revenue-sharing model that allows schools to pay athletes.

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By David Krechevsky

The University of Connecticut’s nonprofit name, image and likeness (NIL) collective Bleeding Blue for Good recently announced plans to shut down.

In a Dec. 31 post on X (formerly Twitter), Jared Guy Thomas, Bleeding Blue’s executive director, said the collective would stop accepting donations at midnight New Year’s Eve.

“We will enter a wind down phase that we expect to take us through the end of June as we meet all of our commitments,” Thomas states. “At that point, we expect revenue sharing to begin. Money already collected will continue to be used to partner UConn student-athletes with deserving Connecticut charities.”

He added that the “same folks that have been running BBfG will continue to aid in this transitional period.”

Bleeding Blue for Good is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that was co-founded two years ago by UConn alums John Malfettone, a former private equity executive who also worked at GE Capital and KPMG, and John Greenblatt, who previously served as interim CEO of the UConn Foundation, the university’s charitable arm.

While fundraising information for 2024 is not yet available, according to 990 tax forms filed with the IRS for 2022 and 2023 Bleeding Blue raised a combined $3.48 million in contributions, grants and other income.

That included raising $2.9 million in grants and contributions in 2023, plus $337,237 in other revenue (including events and items sales) and $1,927 from investment income, for a total of $3.24 million.

When expenses are deducted, the combined total net revenue for 2022 and 2023 was $1.73 million.

Expenses over those two years included $550,500 paid to Ohio-based ProCamps, an event management and sports marketing company, and $540,825 paid to Opendorse, the NIL marketplace platform used by UConn. In both cases, the payments reflect money paid to athletes via the outside organizations, with each accepting a fee — 2% for Opendorse and 10% for ProCamps.

Thomas declined to provide estimated revenue figures for 2024, stating in a message to Hartford Business Journal only that the total was “significantly more.”

The decision to wind down the collective reflects the continually changing landscape in college sports. In November, a federal judge gave preliminary approval to a $2.6 billion settlement agreement the NCAA reached with former college athletes who had filed an antitrust class action lawsuit demanding compensation that had been denied to them.

A condition of the settlement permits school athletic departments to directly share revenue from ticket sales and TV contracts with athletes. It sets the amount to be shared at 22% of that revenue to start, or roughly more than $20 million annually per school.

The court will hold a hearing in April to determine whether to grant final approval to the settlement.

Thomas — who as executive director was Bleeding Blue’s only paid employee, earning $82,477 in 2023 — said in his post on X that the collective “will continue to pass along information on the future of NIL as more information about the potential for revenue sharing is illuminated” in the settlement hearing.

In his statement to Hartford Business Journal, Thomas also said he will transition from serving as executive director of Bleeding Blue to a similar post with Storrs Central, a for-profit, subscription website at storrscentral.com that also raises money for athletes while providing exclusive, behind-the-curtain, insider access to the UConn athletes.

In his post on X, Thomas said Storrs Central will continue to serve as “part-media company … and part-marketing agency,” and that he expects the website to offer “online gift-giving capabilities” early in the new year “for those who would like to continue to contribute to the cause.”

He added that the “primary difference” between donating to Bleeding Blue and donating to Storrs Central is that gifts to the latter will not be tax deductible since it is a for-profit business.