West Virginia Athletic Director Wren Baker made it clear that the Mountaineers were exploring all additional avenues when it comes to revenue sharing.
Baker discussed the possibility of naming rights to the major venues, campus investment, premium seating expansion and many other types of pathways that the program can make.
Well, now you can add a partnership with PayPal through the Big 12 Conference as one of those methods. The partnership is expected to be significant giving the league over $100 million for five years, which boils down to over $1 million annually per team in the league.
The deal makes PayPal the official system for revenue-sharing payments to student athletes for the league.
And per the release this, “enables athletic departments to seamlessly dispense payments through PayPal, ensuring a secure, efficient, and transparent way to distribute funds to payees. With the funds in their wallets, students will have the option to access all the benefits of PayPal's commerce ecosystem, from seamlessly buying tickets to a sporting event or purchasing their books for the year at the university bookstore.”
"We are thrilled to enter into this landmark partnership with PayPal and Venmo," said Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark. "As we embark on a new era of college athletics, aligning with a global leader like PayPal will unlock a wealth of opportunities for the Big 12. This partnership will also empower our student-athletes to receive payments through a secure, trusted platform they already know and use."
It’s just another avenue for the Mountaineers to create additional revenue to backfill what will be required to cover those revenue-sharing payments.
And this likely won’t be the last but is a sign of how forward-thinking the Big 12 is being overall. The league needs more revenue sources moving forward and finding ways to achieve that is going to be critical.
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