The Brandr Group Announces Partnership with Current, Former Alabama Athletes

The Brandr Group (TBG) announced on Wednesday that it is developing a group licensing program for both current and former athletes at the University of Alabama. All current varsity athletes as well as alumni will be able to profit off of their Name, Image and Likeness through group licensing programs that utilize Alabama's official logos and trademarks.

"TBG will work with The University of Alabama's licensees to create new products and promotional opportunities for Alabama student-athletes and alumni who voluntarily opt-in to a group licensing agreement with TBG," the group said in a statement. "This could include a range of licensed goods marrying together University IP with athletes NIL, such as jerseys, apparel, trading cards, bobble heads and video games."

Both Ohio State and North Carolina have already announced partnerships with the Brandr Group.

Through Brandr Group's partnership, both former and current athletes now have the ability to profit off of their NIL in conjunction with University of Alabama branding.

When Alabama released its initial NIL policies for athletes on July 1, the following rule was written: "Use of any registered marks, logos, verbiage or designs owned and protected by The University of Alabama is not permitted unless receiving prior written permission."

While individual sponsorship and endorsement deals must remain free of any Crimson Tide branding, deals agreed through the partnership would allow both current and former athletes to display branding, providing that Alabama is also involved in the deal.

At last month's SEC Media Days, Alabama coach Nick Saban posed his own questions surrounding NIL and current athletes.

"The only thing is, the question is because it's not going to be equal, and everything that we've done in college athletics in the past has always been equal," Saban said. "Everybody's had equal scholarship, equal opportunity. Now that's probably not going to be the case. Some positions, some players will have more opportunities than others.

"How that's going to impact your team, our team, the players on the team, I really can't answer because we don't have any precedent for it."

So far during Alabama football's fall camp press conferences, the topic of NIL has not seemed to disrupt athletes' opinions of the locker room. Heading into NIL policies going into effect, one major concern was that unequal pay for different positions could cause problems.

On Tuesday, Crimson Tide linebacker Christian Harris reiterated that so far, locker room chemistry is proceeding as normal.

"It hasn’t really hasn't affected, any of that on our team, you know any jealousy or anything," Harris said. "I think right now we're really in camp you know like I said, It's day four. We're really just trying to make sure we're focusing on right now and you're ready for a season.”