Alabama, Gonzaga men's basketball teams to appear on trading cards

Alabama and Gonzaga men’s basketball players have agreed to respective trading card deals with ONIT Marketing through the use of their names, images and likenesses. Both programs will be featured in 10,000 packs of trading cards, which will retail for $12.99.

“We’re just rolling out Gonzaga right now,” ONIT Marketing co-founder Sheridan Hodson said Monday in a phone interview. “The packs are coming off our printers actually right as we’re talking.”

The packs featuring the Bulldogs will be available this week. Hodson said the Crimson Tide’s trading card packs will likely be available in the middle of next week.

ONIT Marketing CEO Chad McCloud said nine players in the Alabama trading card series will be considered signature players.

“We’ll have two cards for all nine signature guys, a regular card and a signature card,” McCloud said. “We’re looking to have a coach card and a mascot standard card, a mascot metallic, kind of special card and then I really want to do like a Quinerly brothers duo card.”

Fifth-year senior guard Jahvon Quinerly leads Alabama’s reserves with 18.3 minutes per game, while junior guard Jaden Quinerly has appeared in 10 games this season.

ONIT Marketing has worked with the recently announced NIL collective Yea Alabama, the university’s “official name, image and likeness entity,” for the Crimson Tide’s trading cards. The company had previously worked with the now-defunct collective High Tide Traditions, which supported Alabama athletes’ NIL opportunities but whose website and social media accounts are now offline with the launch of Yea Alabama.

McCloud said ONIT Marketing had a call scheduled this week with Rosauers Supermarkets regarding the distribution of the Gonzaga men’s basketball trading card packs. The trading cards will also be available online.

Yea Alabama is assisting ONIT Marketing with finding local retail partners, according to McCloud.

“Our deals are almost identical,” Hodson said. “We try to pay the athletes $4 a pack [total].”

McCloud said Gonzaga’s players have already been paid, even though the trading cards are still in production.

ONIT Marketing signs agreement with The Brandr Group

ONIT Marketing also reached agreements for the release of 7,500 packs of trading cards featuring Boise State athletes. The athletes in those packs will include men’s and women’s basketball players, as well as female gymnasts and spirit squad members. Athletes from all four programs will be featured in each pack.

The trading card packs featuring the Broncos will be available early next week, according to Hodson.

Last fall, Boise State’s football players were featured in trading cards that were available in Jacksons Food Stores. The university received the award for “Best Institutional Program” at the inaugural NIL Summit last summer.

Hodson said ONIT Marketing recently signed an agreement with the brand management agency The Brandr Group. The goal of the partnership is to scale ONIT Marketing’s trading card campaigns faster, as well as identifying local and regional retail partners.

“This helps us scale in the sense that they already have the group licensing agreements in place with around 80 universities,” McCloud said. “They help us in terms of some of the kind of back-end stuff so that we don’t have to chase down, you know, 1099s and things like that. They handle all that portion and player payment and all that, which helps us in scale. Otherwise, it’s one of our team members doing it here so we can focus on just making the coolest cards that we can.”

ONIT Marketing’s goal is to produce two million packs of trading cards across all sports in the 2023-24 academic year. Hodson estimated that would mean 1.4 million packs for football teams.