Let’s skip the small talk,
I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. For years we’ve heard the horror stories of athlete “agreements” gone wrong. I started looking online for a simple equity agreement tailored for athletes we could share with our community.
Nothing.
So you know what, we did something about it…
LINEUP
1. Headlines of the week 🗞️
2. Athletes 🤝 Reverse Aging
3. New Agreement Template for Athletes 👀
4. Why this needed to be done - Casey Toohill 🗣️
5. Company of the week: The Brodie League🏀
NEWS
Headlines of the Week
• Generation Lab raises an $11M seed round to continue their mission of reversing aging, included participation from Giannis Antetokounmpo. (see more below)
• The Icon League, co-founded by Toni Kroos and Elias Nerlich, raised $17.3M in Series A round led by HV Capital, with participation from Jürgen Klopp (via family office).
• Fastbreak.AI, an AI-driven sports operations software company, completed a $40 million Series A round, including participation from Patrick Cantlay, Kurt Kitayama, Larry Fitzgerald Jr., and Luke Kuechly.
• NBA champion Christian Braun announced his new foundation focused on financial literacy education for youth in Kansas and Colorado. The Braun Foundation partnered with Meritrust Credit Union, which will serve as the Official Financial Well-Being Partner and exclusive banking partner.
OWNER, NOT ENDORSER
Giannis invests in reverse aging
I feel like my breakdowns keep trending toward the health and longevity space. Reverse aging technology companies, such as Generation Lab, are going to increasingly rely on the wisdom of professional athletes, as many of them travel all over the planet seeking remedies to keep their body clean and explosive for as long as possible.
Athletes playing for longer at a high level is not a coincidence. Advancements are being made yearly. You will continue to see Venture-Backed Health Tech Startups lean into athlete expertise and brand.
As for Giannis and BYL Ventures, this is the second health tech investment made in the new portfolio, the first one being our friends over at Superpower. Clearly an area of interest for the Greek Freak. We will closely monitor any other updates that come our way.
NEW AGREEMENT TEMPLATE
The Athlete Advisory Agreement Template!
The past few months, we’ve workshopped a solution to alleviate handshake deals and false promises to athletes, creating an easy and transparent way to execute deliverables that don’t compromise their vesting milestones due to in-season commitments.
Transparency is all we’ve wanted and today I am THRILLED to share we are giving it to you all, for free.
athletesandassets.com/template
The Athlete Advisory Agreement, of course, allows flexibility to adjust share amounts and deliverables. Deliverables for an athlete is a case-by-case situation. We spent the majority of our focus on vesting optionality.
The options presented:
- Time-based vesting
- Performance/Milestone based vesting
- Combinations of time-based and performance/milestone-based vesting
Whether an athlete is in season or shutting it down in the offseason, it should not be a reason to not vest, as long as it’s in writing. Now there is zero excuse of why it shouldn’t be.
This could not have been done without going back and forth for months with our team and Casey on what is fair for athletes, and what is fair for founders. We believe this small contribution to the industry will encourage an entire generation of athletes to become owners of the products and brands they believe in. Not just “endorsers”.
Today I feel immense gratitude for everyone who has supported our journey. Thank you all.
Please read through our click-through agreement before executing. The community strengthens….
ATHLETE PERSPECTIVE
For as long as I’ve known Noah, we’ve gone back and forth about the same issue. Companies want to work with athletes. Athletes want to work with companies.
Yet once the partnership begins, there’s almost never a real structure behind it. The default is usually a cash deal routed through an agent and tied to a social post. Those deals have their place, but they feel transient and impersonal.
When equity comes into play, the lack of structure becomes even more obvious. I’ve seen and heard enough stories where an athlete signs on with good intentions, the company hands over equity, and then everyone quietly realizes they have no idea how to work with each other.
What made it more frustrating is that none of this stemmed from a lack of interest or effort. Most athletes genuinely want to be helpful. Most companies genuinely want to make the partnership work. But once the season picks up or the founder gets buried in the business, the relationship slips into a gray area.
Nobody is totally sure who should take the lead. What are the expectations. The athlete waits for direction. The company hesitates to ask for anything concrete. And before long, the momentum is gone.
Over time, I realized this wasn’t an isolated problem. I kept seeing versions of it from different athletes and different companies. We were tired of simply talking about these frustrations, we wanted to actually have something concrete to say.
The startup world has tools that give people a common language. The YC SAFE is the obvious example. It didn’t solve every problem, but it made early fundraising clearer and removed a lot of the friction around expectations.
We wanted something that served the same purpose: a simple, reliable starting point that took the guesswork out of these partnerships. With some legal guidance, we began shaping what eventually became the advisory template.
The core of the template is straightforward. Instead of handing over equity and hoping the relationship naturally takes shape, the agreement builds in quarterly performance evaluations tied to vesting. We decided on evaluations because professional athletes are inherently familiar with that system. They are evaluated every second of every day. Companies benefit because they finally have clarity around what to expect and what to ask for. There is a clear expectation of what success looks like before they begin.
Success can be qualitative, providing product feedback, joining occasional calls, helping shape it can be quantitative, like making a few targeted introductions or helping the company secure a handful of paying customers. The point isn’t to prescribe a stringent checklist. It’s to create a shared understanding so the relationship feels intentional, not vague or transactional.
At the end of the day, we here at Athletes & Assets™ care about promoting and strengthening the relationships between great companies and the athletes that want to work with them. It was this passion that drove us to simplify, clarify, and strengthen the surrounding language and expectations.
Attached below is the agreement. Please read the click through before executing.
For my athletes and investors out there looking to hire marketing, operations, and finance pros for 80% of the cost, Oceans is a great resource for growing teams. Most quality offshore hiring you could do.
Reach if you have any questions or if you want an intro call with the team.
COMPANY OF THE WEEK
Brodie Sports Group
Every once a while we come across companies that make us say “wow how did we not know about this?”
Brodie Sports Group has quietly gone from a sleepy Canadian Rec league to a national powerhouse boasting 35,000+ participants in their adults men’s basketball leagues across the country.
Fully bootstrapped and profitable up to this point, Connor and team are looking for the right professional athletes to join their ship and help take Brodie from 1 to 100. For more details on what that entails, check it out here or reach out with any questions. This will not be available for long.
Want to get in front of ~9,000 of the most influential athletes and investors in Sports and Entertainment? Reply to this email and tell us why we should work together.
Athletes and Assets, Inc. accepts no liability for the content of this blog, or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided. Please invest responsibly and consult a financial advisor before making any investment related decisions.
