As sports fans swarmed into Rupp Arena for the Kentucky High School Sweet 16 on Wednesday, another event just across the street was helping up and coming athletes.

The Nile Academy is a nonprofit focused on educating young athletes on the ins and outs of using their name, image and likeness or animal rights until a 2021 Supreme Court ruling.

College athletes were not eligible to receive financial compensation for the use of their nails.

We just thought it was imperative that they have some information about email.

If, you know, there's a lot of matters moving around about what it is, what is not, how effective sports.

But at the end of the day, it's a business opportunity for young people or student athletes.

So we just wanted to provide some information that allowed the season to maximize in that opportunity because it's did it make sense?

It also changed the landscape of college athletics because.

The.

The powerhouses, so to speak, they've been they've had a strong player in all the most talent.

Well, now, you know, you have smaller schools that have some type of fundraising, but you have businesses, backers, and they're able to reach out to Athens that typically may not have.

Looked at the.

School as a place to as a landing spot to play sports at.

And they have they have a chance to go to that school.

Never.

Profiting from nil rights is still a fairly new concept.

Among the key parts of the conference.

Clearing out misconceptions about denial and preparing student athletes for the pitfalls of the business world.

A lot of folks think that the money comes in the college institutions itself, but it's basically just businesses that are out there just working with student athletes.

To promote their brand.

So lack of information, the lack of understanding about the principles of business is the drain on the time being a student, being an athlete.

We in the business was in the other the multi-tasker, juggling all those things.

It was it was the barrier to the information allowed scale and social media allowed Marianne how to do the private says were businesses are probably like good brewers where you sell so there's a lot of challenges but they're not.

It was about insurmountable and there's information days so having an event like this is a way to connect the young people with the actual information that exists and to put those two together.

Will I seize this opportunity?

This is definitely something outside of sports and and school itself.

It's it's a third career really out there on how to reach out to companies and get my name out there to advertise for more than just local communities and businesses.

In 2023, the Kentucky High School Athletics Association decided that high school students were eligible for an I. L benefits.