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Spry Announces Educational Partnership with Playbk Sports

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Playbk Sports Announces Partnership with Compliance and Education Provider –  Spry

From Playbk Sports

Playbk Sports has teamed up with Spry, a compliance and education software provider, to offer a new suite of learning resources for student-athletes. Spry currently works with over 100 colleges and institutions serving over 20,000 student-athletes.

The course content will focus on entrepreneurship and include the voice and story of Playbk co-founder Jon Shepherd, a former NCAA athlete himself, among other athletes invited into this new offering for Spry. For Shepherd, this represents an opportunity to share his love of sport and business with collegiate athletes who are sharing the same road he traveled back in the early 2000s.

“It’s great to be able to contribute back to the community of student-athletes through this new partnership with Spry,” Shepherd said.

“The synergies between the skills athletes learn in their pursuit of high-performance sport and what is required to be an entrepreneur are evident. Being a great athlete doesn’t simply make you a great entrepreneur, but this course will help student-athletes identify the skills and mindset they have developed as athletes and think about how they can transfer these into business opportunities.”

The recent introduction of the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) policy to collegiate sports has opened the door for student-athletes in the NCAA system to commercialize their name, image or likeness for the first time. This change has seen the need to support student-athletes with concepts not previously included as part of traditional education offerings – including entrepreneurship.

Spry has been at the forefront of providing NIL and general compliance solutions to NCAA, as well as NAIA and two-year institutions, supporting student-athletes with their education and ensuring all compliance requirements are managed effectively by athletic departments.

For Spry’s Director of Compliance, Todd Hairston, this opportunity to work with Playbk Sports is an exciting step in developing more education resources for the student-athletes who engage with Spry’s software.

“We are extremely excited about our partnership with Playbk Sports.  Through this collaboration, we will equip thousands of student-athletes with the resources to leverage the opportunities now available to them through NIL.”

This initial course offering will explore topics such as the mindset of an entrepreneur and the transferable skills between sport and entrepreneurship. It will also delve into broader subject areas such as identifying market opportunities and designing an effective business model canvas.

 “The goal with this course offering is to open student-athletes minds to how they can apply important business principles within the opportunities that NIL has opened up.” Shepherd went on to say. “If they can find ways to transfer their high-performance mindset and behaviors into a business setting, I think NIL can be leveraged by student-athletes to begin setting up career options whilst they complete their study and athletic pursuits.”

The shifting landscape in collegiate sports provides new and exciting opportunities for student-athletes, this newly formed partnership between Playbk Sports and Spry will only go further in enhancing these opportunities and supporting them in establishing the building blocks of a successful career – in or out of the sporting arena.

About Playbk Sports 

Every team needs a playbook.

Playbk Sports makes delivering online content simple and effective with dynamic technology, immersive experiences, and evergreen material that turns fan avidity into revenue.

Playbk Sports works with your organization by harnessing your logo, players, coaches, stadia, training facilities, and team administrators and harnesses the power of those ‘brands’ or assets to create global fan avidity and strategic value your organization can rely on in sustainable ways.

We create experiences that help sports organizations give their worldwide fans what they want – closer access to the sports they love.

About Spry Payment Systems, Inc.

Spry is an administrative software platform for athletic departments. Spry’s mobile and web-based platform revolutionizes the way we think about intercollegiate compliance, team collaboration and name, image, and likeness (NIL) management. With dynamic messaging, form sharing and custom workflows that empower athletic departments Spry ensures that all stakeholders are connected and compliant through SpryNIL and Spry Connect.

To see a demo, visit www.spry.so or email [email protected].

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Jackson Donanue

SPRY'S BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

Jackson graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 where he was a 4-Year Starter and a Captain of the Men's Basketball team. Prior to joining Spry, Jackson gained experience in an array of different industries including Technology (SaaS), Hospitality/Operations, eCommerce (Start-Up), and Consulting. Jackson also holds a Master's Degree in Sports Management from Columbia University.