NIL impact 2026: What the rulings mean for Australians

• Every Australian in the NCAA Men's basketball in 2026-27‍
• Every Australian in NCAAW basketball in 2026-27
• Every Australian player in the 2026 Transfer Portal

Florida forward Alex Condon, 22, plays in a conference where the average basketball roster now costs about $18 million a year. Australians like him are being paid out of that money, and the legal structure that lets it happen is one their own lawyers describe as fragile.

That is the real state of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) in American college basketball, and it is not the story usually told about it.

The common version says international athletes are locked out. They are not. They are being paid through a classification that has never been tested, and the people who built it know it.

THE MONEY IS REAL NOW, AND IT COMES FROM THE SCHOOL

The change that matters happened on July 1, 2025, when the $2.8 billion settlement in House v. NCAA took effect and universities began paying athletes directly for the first time.

It runs a 10-year revenue-sharing model. Each school may distribute up to 22 per cent of the average revenue that ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC schools earn from media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships. That was about $20.5 million per school in year one. The College Sports Commission, which administers the settlement, estimates approximately $21.3 million per school for 2026-27.

Alongside it sits NIL Go, a clearinghouse run by Deloitte that reviews every non-school NIL deal above $600 for fair market value. In its first year the Commission approved 8,300 deals worth just under $80 million.

The Athletic reported in late July that basketball roster costs now average about $11.5 million per team in the ACC and about $18 million in the SEC, with one assistant saying three or four SEC teams are in the $30 million range. An SEC head coach said of it: "I do not think it's a sustainable model, but people keep paying for it."

HOW AN AUSTRALIAN ACTUALLY GETS PAID

Australians in the NCAA hold F-1 student visas. Immigration law defines employment very broadly, as "any service or labor performed by an employee for an employer within the United States", and F-1 holders may generally work on campus only.

On the face of it, none of the money above should reach them.

It does, through four structures.

The first is the school's own revenue share, and it is the biggest. Universities are classifying these payments as royalties for the use of a player's NIL, issuing a Form 1099-MISC with the money in the royalties box rather than a Form W-2. No wages, no payroll tax, no employment. That choice was made in large part because passive licensing income is permitted on an F-1 while wages are not.

The second is home-market work. An Australian brand pays an Australian player, in Australia, for a campaign running in Australia. The work is not performed in the United States, so the restriction does not bite. This is the cleanest route available and it is why a class of Australian NIL agents and advisers now exists.

The third is offshore work during team travel. Oscar Tshiebwe reportedly earned about $500,000 doing promotional work while Kentucky were in the Bahamas. Legitimate, and useless to most players, who are in America nearly all year.

The fourth is genuinely passive group licensing, the jersey and video game programs where an athlete does nothing beyond permitting the use of their name. Immigration lawyers describe this as the lowest-risk route there is.

WHY THE LAWYERS SAY THE BIGGEST ONE WILL NOT HOLD

The royalty classification is the one carrying the most money and the most risk.

Ksenia Maiorova, the immigration attorney acting for Australian guard Last-Tear Poa in her case against US Citizenship and Immigration Services, co-authored a detailed argument that it is "legally fragile". Her reasoning is hard to dismiss.

The payments are predicated on athletic performance. Unlike a patent royalty, where the inventor collects while others use the invention, here the athlete has to keep playing for the revenue to exist at all.

The licence may be a fiction. Universities used players' names and images for decades without paying for them. What changed was a legal settlement, not a licensing need.

And the distribution formula gives the argument away. The money goes overwhelmingly to football and basketball. LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne carried one of the highest NIL valuations in college sport and would receive nothing under this model, because gymnastics does not generate revenue. If the payments really were compensation for NIL value, they would not be allocated that way.

Then there is Johnson v. NCAA, in which the Third Circuit held that college athletes can be employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act where they perform services for another party, primarily for that party's benefit, under that party's control, and in return for compensation.

College sport already met the first three. The House settlement supplied the fourth.

THE RISK RUNS IN BOTH DIRECTIONS

For the player, unauthorised employment is a status violation. It can mean loss of status, ineligibility for future immigration benefits and removal proceedings, and it can surface years later at a visa application or a port of entry.

For the institution, 8 U.S.C. 1324a makes it unlawful to knowingly engage the labour of someone without work authorisation, and the statute is explicit that using a contract to obtain that labour counts as hiring. Calling the arrangement a licence does not settle it. Agencies look at the activity, not the label.

That is why compliance offices are cautious, and it is part of why an advisory industry has grown around Australian players.

CONGRESS COULD SETTLE IT AND HAS NOT

S.4668, the Protect College Sports Act of 2026, was introduced on June 2 by Ted Cruz with Maria Cantwell, Eric Schmitt and Chris Coons. It would codify much of the House settlement, cap agent fees at five per cent, preempt state NIL laws and give schools antitrust cover to enforce the rules.

The Senate Commerce Committee reported it favourably on June 18 by 19 votes to 9, and it was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 24 as Calendar No. 449. It has not moved since. The congress.gov tracker still reads Introduced.

The conference politics did move. On July 31 the SEC and the Big Ten dropped weeks of resistance and backed the bill after the committee tightened language on the loophole that would have let schools route money around the cap through sponsors and collectives. It did not create floor time. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said of the bill: "I don't think we'll be able to get them done."

And it would not fix this even if it passed. The Act is expressly neutral on whether athletes are employees, so it does not touch the visa question. Congress has separately asked the Department of Homeland Security to clarify whether F-1 holders can receive revenue-share payments. No guidance has ever been issued.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE AUSSIES

There are almost 200 Australians on NCAA basketball rosters this season, more than 120 of them women. Many are being paid, some of them very well, on a legal footing nobody has tested.

Former Boomer and Sydney Kings captain Ben Madgen, 41, now an investment adviser, told basketball.com.au that the support around those players has not caught up.

"You've got college athletes between 18 and 23 earning seven figures a year, and for a lot of them, that NIL deal is the single biggest contract they will ever sign in their life," he said.

"Nobody sits an 18-year-old down and says, here's what this contract could mean for the next 40 years of your life."

For Australians there is a second conversation nobody is having, and it is not about investment strategy.

It is that the structure delivering the money is contested, the consequences of it failing fall on an 18-year-old's immigration status, and the people best placed to explain that are lawyers rather than coaches.

Three things could resolve it. A Senate floor vote in the autumn. A ruling in Poa's case. Or DHS finally answering a question it has been asked since 2024.

Until then the money keeps arriving, and so does the risk.

This is reporting on the state of the law, not legal advice.