To address the increasing number of contract disputes involving college athletes, a new service is presenting itself as a cost-effective, out-of-court solution tailored for resolving many of those conflicts.

FAIR (Forum of Arbitration & Independent Resolution) Sports is set to launch this spring, coinciding with the final approval of the House v. NCAA settlement by a federal court. FAIR Sports was registered registered in November as a Delaware public benefit corporation, a for-profit company that is held to a legal standard of acting in the common good. The forum will offer arbitration and mediation services for athlete disputes arising outside the NCAA’s enforcement purview, in deals with schools, NIL collectives and other third parties.

The company is co-founded by Tim Nevius, a former NCAA enforcement official-turned-player advocate, and sports lawyer Tye Gonser.

Nevius, who is also an attorney, previously served as a field investigator for the NCAA and led the probe into Ohio State’s so-called “tattoo gate” infractions case. He now runs a law practice dedicated to assisting college athletes in eligibility and other issues; also, he serves as outside counsel to Overtime Elite. Gonser, based in Los Angeles, represents athletes including Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams and co-authored an influential 2017 white paper that laid out a model for NIL in college sports.

In a phone interview, Nevius said he and Gonser initially began hatching the idea for FAIR Sports months before the the preliminary House settlement was announced.

“Looking at some of the [NIL] agreements, we were seeing the prospect of a significant number of disputes if things continued toward revenue sharing,” Nevius said. “Arbitration is part of virtually every major professional and governing body sports league, and the more college moves toward for professionalizing, the more we see a need for arbitration forum.”

Nevius said FAIR Sports has “thrown its hat in the ring” to be the designated House settlement arbitration service provider for institutions or athletes to contest punishment the NCAA imposes for payments received in violation of the settlement’s rules. However, these disputes would represent a small portion of FAIR Sports’ overall work.

FAIR Sports will handle matters as the pre-designated alternative dispute resolution (ADR) venue for athlete contracts. Nevius mentioned that some revenue-sharing contract templates already include FAIR Sports as the designated ADR provider, though cases can also be referred to if both parties later agree to arbitration.

Though fees will be case-specific, Nevius stressed that FAIR Sports’ mission is to minimize expense, ensuring affordable and efficient arbitration for athletes and institutions.

“Given who we are serving, we are going to make every effort to keep the costs low, so arbitration is affordable and efficient,” Nevius said. “We just want to make as much money as we need to provide the service, because we think this will be an important part of college sports.”

FAIR Sports’ newly launched website features a lineup of prominent advisors, including former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick and Oliver Luck, the ex-NCAA official and former West Virginia AD. However, neither the advisors, Nevius nor Gonser will be involved in the arbitrations—those will be overseen by independent third parties known as “neutrals.”

To date, FAIR Sports has appointed 11 neutrals, including Tulane Sports Law Program director Gabe Feldman; former NBA chief legal officer Jeffrey Mishkin; former World Anti-Doping Agency commissioner Richard McLaren; and Jodi Balsam, a Brooklyn Law School professor who previously served on the NCAA’s independent resolution panel. Nevius added that FAIR Sports plans to expand the roster with a few more neutral arbitrators in the coming weeks.

For years, the two main players in sports-related alternative dispute resolution have been the nonprofit American Arbitration Association (AAA) and the for-profit JAMS, previously known as Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services. Earlier this month, the AAA publicized new due process guidelines for arbitration involving NIL disputes.

In 2023, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee switched its designated arbitration services provider from AAA to New Era ADR, a relatively new Chicago-based company that also has done work for the Chicago Cubs. In a phone interview, New Era ADR’s founder Collin Williams said that although his group has yet to do any work in the NCAA space, it was “incredibly interested” in the opportunity to engage in disputes involving college athlete revenue-sharing.

Since the NCAA’s interim NIL policy was enacted in July 2021, numerous controversies have arisen surrounding the terms and enforcement of athlete agreements. Currently, two NIL-related lawsuits are underway in Florida, involving athletes suing FSU head men’s basketball coach Leonard Hamilton and UF head football coach Billy Napier. Both cases face challenges due to Florida’s sovereign immunity protections, which often limit or bar civil litigation against public agencies and their employees. 

In light of this, many public schools might be disinclined to relinquish what could be a fail-safe legal safeguard by including explicit ADR language into revenue-sharing contracts with athletes. Sportico previously reported on a Big Ten school’s revenue-sharing contract, which used a league-provided template. The dispute resolution language in that agreement did not mention arbitration, instead directing the parties to attempt “good faith negotiations” before resorting to filing suit in court.

(This has been updated with more information on AAA and JAMS.)