BLOOMINGTON— A former IU basketball player is putting his business degree to use and creating a platform to help other student athletes.
Anthony Leal played for Hoosiers and graduated from the IU Kelley School of Business. His junior year, he came up with an idea to help athletes with NIL deals.
“The final class of my entrepreneurship degree was to kind of try to start a business, so I started doing that and it started at just an NIL focused thing since NIL was so brand new so I started with that and realized you know there’s a lot bigger problem can be solved,” said Leal.
Leal was just starting his college career when in 2021 NIL came into play and athletes could capitalize on their name, image, and likeness.
“It was so new, and for me personally, my own NIL I tried to do as many deals as I could and raise as much as I could and try and save and do it for a good cause,” said Leal.
Leal did show that good can come out of NIL. He chose to pay off his sister’s student loans as a Christmas gift and a video of it went viral.
“I had athletes from all around the country reaching out to me asking for advice. Basically asking me to help them do the same thing I was doing,” said Leal.
“I think if you learn one thing about Anthony he’s usually on the cutting edge of applying his business experience to being an athlete and how he can monetize that and be a business and a brand,” said Jay Townsend, one of Leal’s business partners.
Leal teamed up with Townsend and Nate Ebel, both IU graduates, to co-found Motion Sports Inc. It’s a technology platform for college athletic departments putting team management, compliance, and NIL deals all in one place.
“It’s everything a college athletic department needs for how to function and manage the day to day,” said Ebel.
Ebel and Townsend helped Leal expand the app beyond just NIL. The money side of the platform is still developing as the House vs NCAA Settlement play outs, which could create revenue sharing.
“That gives the athletic department the opportunity to directly pay students athletes from a university bank account,” said Townsend.
Right now Motion Sports has deals with five athletic departments. The goal is to help them operate more efficiently and with everything in one place.
“We don’t think they should be spending lots of hours in the day to day of what the new revenue sharing looks like or what the new academic requirements are or how many hours you can spend on a practice field. We want to have their back on that,” said Townsend.
