But the risks are almost as many as the benefits for young athletes. Most start-up professional sports leagues, innovative as they are, fail. Overtime Elite will require tens of millions of dollars to operate on the scale that its founders envision, but if it is unsuccessful, your athletes may run out of places to play.
“We are genuine in really investing in hiring genuinely serious and legitimate people to manage all aspects of the company,” said Porter. “I don’t want to interfere with the children’s lives. I don’t want people to mess with my children’s lives. There is a moral obligation attached to this. “
Weiner said the company is “extremely well capitalized” to start the league. Overtime, Porter added, raised a “significant” amount of money in an unspoken round of financing last fall, and planned to use it to pay for players, hire employees and rent houses, offices, a gym and educational spaces.
Some details about what the league will really look like or how fans can watch it are still unclear. There will be no permanent teams, but dynamic lineups within the league, and Porter and Weiner envision some sort of barnstorming tour of Europe. The games will undoubtedly be viewable online, but Overtime promises that the games themselves and the content around them will not be very similar to typical basketball programs.
Overtime Elite is not the only basketball league that sees opportunities in rule changes around amateurism and players’ desire to be paid immediately. Former NBA player David West started the Professional Collegiate League, and the NBA development league recently started courting the best 18-year-olds who want to skip college completely on their way to the NBA
But Overtime Elite is the first serious league designed to pay high school players, despite the failed LaVar Ball Junior Basketball Association.
Porter and Weiner reject the idea that they are challenging state high school athletic associations, the NCAA, high school coaches and the many other entities invested in the current system.