Everett Sports Management will assist Gamecock student-athletes in every phase of the NIL process, at no expense to the player.
The University of South Carolina has announced a partnership with Everett Sports Management to create and develop Park Ave, an NIL subsidiary that will aim to help Gamecock student-athletes with brand support, content development, and deal procurement and negotiations.
ESM comes to the table with plenty of experience in helping athletes secure deals, already representing the likes of Jonathan Taylor, Nick Chubb, Jalen Hurts, the Cavinder twins, and Mac Jones. ESM also represents Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett, who signed with the company shortly after winning the national championship.
Park Ave will come at no expense to South Carolina student-athletes. Exact terms of the deal between ESM and the university were not revealed.
“Since the development of NIL, we have said that we wanted our NIL program to maximize the opportunities for our student-athletes to engage in successful, meaningful partnerships,” said Gamecock Athletics Director Ray Tanner in a release. “ESM and the Park Ave platform will give our student-athletes the ability to create these relationships at the highest level.”
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The Gamecocks recently welcomed former Oklahoma signal caller and 2019 top-ranked quarterback recruit Spencer Rattler to their campus. According to On3, the Phoenix native already comes with NIL deals such as Jim Hudson Toyota and Garnet Trust. As for how Park Ave’s presence will affect those deals and any other athletes that have pre-existing relationships with companies, ESM President Dan Everett said Park Ave will only help.
“We are an ancillary service to what their current agents are already doing,” Everett told Boardroom in a phone interview. “The first thing I’ll do is have a conversation with the alpha talent at South Carolina and their representation because how they should look at this is, ESM has boots on the ground and can bring more deals to their clients free of charge.”
One of the reasons that ESM tied itself to South Carolina and not another school was because of proximity. With ESM being based in South Carolina and the Gamecocks’ campus in the state’s capital, there was a natural interest. Everett also said his relationship with South Carolina goes back more than a decade.
As part of the multi-year partnership, ESM and Park Ave will be an exclusive service to South Carolina. Within the first seven days of the partnership, ESM expects to start landing deals for athletes. The ESM President also wants to think larger.
“I’m very confident in the first 30 days that we will have team wide opportunities such as the entire baseball team or the entire women’s basketball team,” he said. “Park Ave also wants to be able to have a deal in place that is open to every student-athlete so you have a deal that is available to up to 500 student athletes where they have the option to opt in or opt out. That has never been done before.”
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