(Orlando) - College recruiting platform GMTM.com announced this week that they will be launching a new functionality to enable college athletes to earn money based on their name, image, and likeness under new state laws being enacted across the country.
"We are most excited to connect Athletes to other Athletes looking for opportunities." says co-founder and CEO Joey Grant, himself a former D1 college football player, “and organizations, parents, and athletes are all interested in information that could lead to their next opportunity."
On GMTM, aspiring college athletes are able to compete in virtual events and take online training courses to better prepare for their future careers. Colleges at every level, professional teams, and even Olympic organizations are using the platform to find hidden and previously inaccessible talent at a fraction of the cost of traditional recruiting methods.
"Forty-percent of our new athletes this year came from GMTM," says Shaun Weaver, a recruiting coordinator at Albright College, who hosted a Virtual Visit on the platform, “and 16 kids were from areas we were never able to recruit before.”
The Division-III school had over 200 prospects from across the country participate in their interactive campus visit on GMTM. Before hosting their event on GMTM, which has had thousands of active high school football players create profiles, reaching that amount of kids was economically impossible for the small Pennsylvania college.
Albright’s success, though, is a pretty typical result for the dozens of colleges that have partnered with GMTM so far. And with the advent of new benefits available to collegiate student-athletes, the athlete exposure platform’s new project is to help current NCAA athletes expand their reach and influence.
To support the new monetization rules, GMTM will be enabling current NCAA athletes to earn money on the platform by offering virtual training courses to other aspiring athletes and even evaluate their films.
The process is simple for college athletes who want to get involved as evaluators. The process includes reaching out to GMTM to create their virtual evaluation page, watching and providing feedback on the film when an athlete submits and collecting a fee for their verified feedback. Athletes will find the page through the GMTM events page, or the evaluators can share the link to their network of hopeful college athletes on social media.
Currently, the functionality is being utilized on the site by former college stars such as Jordan Palmer, an elite quarterback coach based in southern California, and 24/7 Ranking Evaluator Ed O'Brien based in Pennsylvania. Both coaches have been able to provide feedback for athletes far outside their regions and collect a fee for their evaluations.
"I’ve always taken pride in offering advice on my career as a player and I think a lot of other players wish they could do more to pay it forward,” says Grant, describing the new opportunity for current athletes. “Now through GMTM, current NCAA athletes can start helping the next guys up,” Grant says, “and make some money while building their businesses and brands.”
Scotty Jenkins is a staff writer for GMTM covering virtual events in various sports and platform updates.
