New NIL platform Prospex hopes to empower fans, players through trading cards

The NIL space has opened doors for many outsiders to enter the world of college recruiting and sports.

But there has been one group of people left on the outside looking in on the new frontier: the common fan.

Prospex, a new company that launched Thursday, has designed a NIL platform that allows for transparent engagement between fans and players through the purchase of a custom trading card.

Participating athletes will choose up to 10 possible schools and Prospect will create a digital trading card for each program. Fans will then be able to buy their school-specific digital trading card.

“The thing that is most exciting for us is what our vision is, which is empowering athletes and fans to own the NIL space in a way that that serves a real need,” Prospex co-founder Patricia Eiting said. “The idea is that it’s this fun and engaging platform that helps athletes determine which schools are really going to step up and support them. At the same time, it gives fans — for the first time — an active role in participating in helping put their teams together.”

There are just over 20 athletes participating in the initial release of Prospex, headlined by On3 Consensus five-star prospects Matayo Uiagalelei and Jurrion Dickey.

Four-star linebacker Blake Nichelson, four-star cornerback and California’s top sprinter Rodrick Pleasant and four-star quarterback Jaden Rashada are other players participating in the initial launch.

Dickey said he is excited about the opportunity to express himself through the NFTs and the platform.

For Pleasant, the Prospex deal is his first NIL deal. He has been wary about NIL deals throughout his recruitment, but this deal felt different to him.

“This seemed like a very reasonable entryway to start,” Pleasant said.

When a player makes a decision and enrolls at their chosen school, fans will receive either a physical or web3 collectable version of the card. Players receive 85% of the sales revenues from the cards sold to fans of the program they decided to enroll in and attend.

For fans who invested in cards of teams that a player does not choose in their recruiting process, they can turn in that card and will receive 90% of their money back.

SPARQ Games will design the web3 collectables, which will have unique 3D motion graphics of the athletics.

“One of the things that this platform offers that is sorely missing in NIL is transparency,” Eiting  said. “Especially for kids that don’t have necessarily a lot of advisors around them, it’s very hard for them to get a feel for their NIL value, to know what rumors are true and which are not, to know what their real value is.”

Eiting said the company had NIL attorney Mit Winter review the platform and confirms it fits all NCAA requirements for NIL.

Prospex sees this recruiting cycle’s athletes as a test run for a wider effort coming in the 2024 recruiting cycle. The plan will be to not only include more football players but also expand the platform to athletes in other sports such as men’s and women’s basketball and Olympic sports.

With the first roll out starting soon, Eiting said she is excited to see how the cards are received by the fans of each team. She hopes fans view the cards as a way to be stakeholders in their favorite schools, like how fans of European soccer clubs or the Green Bay Packers own shares in the franchise. For players, it can be another thing to consider in their recruiting process.

“From our insights work, we can tell you that lots and lots of fans want to participate in NIL, believe in NIL but aren’t necessarily the high profile donors and big boosters that the collectives are really designed to work with,” Eiting said. “We think this gives them a way to step up and help support their teams.”