incentive to return profit. Boosters are often not. So they really aren’t very similar. Yes, there are plenty of NIL deals based on an enterprise’s primary desire that the investment in the athletes benefits the enterprises business. But traditionally boosters gave benefits primarily because losing money gave them personal value by seeing a team win. That’s not a market decision. They actually had to hide that they did this to the public to keep teams from getting sanctioned. Now that they are pretty much allowed to do this with no regulatory oversight, that is only likely to increase the number of non-market decisions to pay players.

That schools have to recruit donations to keep up with other teams suggests that this isn’t a void the market was just dying to fill at the numbers that are currently being spent.

People are worth what people are willing to pay them, market decision or not. This discussion is a non-starter.

I am not interested in the NCAA becoming the arbiter of who is and isn't allowed to make bad decisions for bona fide market reasons. But there can be reporting requirements for the amount of compensation and nature of the work performed. It could also require having to show actual work performed by the athlete/promotion by the entity of the relationship that exploits the NIL. Students regularly have reporting requirements for internships. The disclosure itself will disincentivize a company from making deals that he knows the market would consider to be wasteful. Alternately, if they believe they are getting market value out of the relationship (increase business with alumni, etc.), they will want to promote it. The reporting itself will allow compliance folks to see outlandish amounts that warrant further scrutiny. These are duties that the NCAA has long performed when analyzing whether employment is bona fide or not.

compared to the actual revenue being generated (especially since the institutions themselves aren't paying any of that revenue out to the players in the form of NIL).