John Patterson
The recent introduction of the right for athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness (“NIL”) into collegiate sports has officially breached international borders. Under the 2025 House settlement, collegiate athletes in the United States can now receive compensation for their NIL and institutions may partake in sharing up to $20.5 million in revenue with athletes across all of their programs.[i] How institutions decide to allocate that money across their programs varies greatly.[ii] In its original form, institutional revenue sharing was intended to provide athletes compensation merely for holding a spot on their respective roster.[iii] This compensation has quickly turned into what is colloquially called “pay-for-play” where athletes are receiving different proportions of money based on their overall and projected performance.[iv] The development of this pay-for-play system has led to collegiate sports mirroring a model often seen in professional leagues where success is measured in how well teams can maneuver players and navigate the salary caps placed upon them.[v]
Majorly via the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”), collegiate sports in America offer an opportunity for athletes aged from 17-25[vi] to compete in sports while simultaneously receiving a post-secondary education from their respective institution.[vii] Whereas internationally, leagues such as the Basketball Bundesliga offer compensation to similarly aged athletes and consider them to be employees under European Union employment directives and national labor laws, as well as provide training at younger ages for athlete development.[viii] The pay-for-play system has created talent retention issues in the international leagues as athletes are getting paid at similar, if not higher, rates to that of the leagues across the pond.[ix] Coupled with the unique bonus of attaining a prestigious post-secondary education, international athletes are readily looking for opportunities to join in the American fun.
However, it must be noted that opportunities for international athletes to be paid through revenue sharing are inconsistent. Many athletes enter the United States on F-1 visas which prohibit the athlete from collecting any “active” income but allows for “passive” income.[x] As federal law remains silent on the matter, whether revenue sharing counts as active or passive income seems to be determined by each institution’s appetite for risk.[xi] Though revenue sharing with international athletes is institution dependent, this presents another talent retention issue for international leagues. Leaning on the non-monetary value of their programs, American colleges are increasing their recruitment of international athletes.[xii] If a risk averse college recruits an international athlete and does not utilize revenue sharing budget to do so, the college is then able to allocate that money to recruit a “greater” domestic talent with those funds.
Through athletes leaving their countries to seek out revenue sharing opportunities and American colleges recruiting athletes from abroad, national leagues across the globe face heavy challenges in retaining their talent. A prime example is the German Basketball Bundesliga. The Bundesliga is the professional club basketball league in Germany that is currently touted to be in a new “golden era” of basketball since they last saw success in 2005.[xiii] Hannes Steinbach—a 19 year old forward and upcoming new face of the league—announced that he would attend Washington University just seven months after joining the Bundesliga.[xiv]
Additionally, the Bundesliga currently employs a “6+6” rule where of the 12-man roster, at least six players must be German.[xv] This rule is said to have been key in the development of German basketball and with athletes leaving Germany for revenue sharing options in the United States, talks of changing the rule are on the rise.[xvi] With the pay-for-play system’s increasing impact outside American borders, it will likely come as no surprise if international leagues start to push back. As of this post, the International Basketball Federation (“FIBA”) is looking to begin talks with the NCAA to compensate national leagues for their development efforts in players that end up at American colleges.[xvii] If a supplement is not found for this current talent retention issue, international leagues may begin to find themselves acting simply as training bodies for the NCAA.
[i] Opinion Regarding Order Granting Motion for Final Approval of Settlement Agreement, In re Coll. Athlete NIL Litig., 803 F. Supp. 3d 959 (2025) (No. 717).
[ii] See Andy Wittry, What will College Athletic Department Revenue-Sharing Look Like? (last visited Mar. 30, 2026), https://athleticdirectoru.com/articles/what-will-college-athletic-department-revenue-sharing-look-like/ (comparing how Texas Tech University projects to share its revenue sharing budget—74% with its football team, 17.4% with its men’s basketball team, and the remainder with eleven other sports—to the University of Connecticut—50.3% and 11.2% to the men’s and women’s basketball respectively—and other institutions).
[iii] Difference Between NIL and Pay-for-Play, Peak Performance (last visited Mar. 30, 2026), https://bit.ly/4bXtEzU.
[iv] See id.
[v] See generally Lev Akabas, How do NBA contracts and salary cap work?, Sportico (Jul. 5, 2024), https://www.sportico.com/feature/nba-salaries-explained-salary-cap-1234786618/ (explaining how the salary cap for the National Basketball Association is implemented).
[vi] Due to recent NCAA policy implementations, it should be noted that there are a small number of collegiate athletes that have played above this age range. See generally Zack Goodrow, Understanding the NCAA COVID-19 eligibility extensions (Mar. 15, 2021), https://lanthorn.com/81318/sports/understand-the-ncaa-covid-19-eligibility-extensions/ (discussing how the impact of COVID-19 led the NCAA to extend total number of years of eligibility athletes received to play four seasons of their sport).
[vii] See Dimitrios I. Bourdas et al., Amateurism in Flux: NIL Beyond Borders and the Strategic Crossroads of European Basketball, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, Nov. 5, 2025, at 1.
[viii] Id. at 2; see Jonathan Harding, How NIL money changes the game for German basketball (Sep. 17, 2025), https://www.dw.com/en/how-nil-money-changes-the-game-for-german-basketball/a-74012074.
[ix] Bourdas, supra note 7.
[x] See Mike Meltser, Advanced Intellectual Property Law, TexasBarCLE 2024, ch. 6, III. Limitations On International Student-Athletes.
[xi] See Bryan Dearinger, Name, Image, and Likeness: International Student-Athletes (last visited Mar. 30, 2026), https://generalcounsel.uoregon.edu/name-image-and-likeness-international-student-athletes (explaining how passive and active income are not perfectly defined terms and how arguments can be made in numerous directions).
[xii] See March Madness Goes Global: The Rising Impact of international Talent in NCAA Basketball, WSC Sports (Mar. 13, 2025), https://wsc-sports.com/blog/industry-insights/march-madness-goes-global-the-rising-impact-of-international-talent-in-ncaa-basketball/ (explaining how the shift in the increase in international players is not coincidence but rather the result of targeted recruitment).
[xiii] Harding, supra note 8.
[xiv] Id.
[xv] Id.
[xvi] Id.
[xvii] Id.; see FIBA explains why international transfers to NCAA must be regulated by LOC, BasketNews (May 17, 2025), https://basketnews.com/news-224658-fiba-explains-why-international-transfers-to-ncaa-must-be-regulated-by-loc.html.