There’s a lot of noise right now around Kentucky’s relationship with JMI Sports, NIL, and how revenue sharing is going to work going forward. Rumors and anonymous sources are part of the landscape, but it’s worth separating that from what’s actually documented and on the record.
This is a facts-only look at what Kentucky and JMI have publicly said and signed. We will let you draw your own conclusions.
JMI has been Kentucky’s multimedia rights partner for more than a decade
JMI Sports became the multimedia rights partner for UK Athletics in 2014. That deal made JMI responsible for corporate sponsorships, marketing and a wide range of campus and athletics inventory, things like signage, naming rights and in-venue advertising.
In August 2025, Kentucky and JMI announced an extension of that partnership through 2040. The extension is estimated to be worth more than $465 million and stretches the agreement from its previous end date of 2034. It also shifted the financial model: roughly 80% of net revenue from the multimedia rights inventory now flows back to UK and its Champions Blue fundraising arm.
In other words, JMI isn’t just a “sponsor seller.” It’s Kentucky’s long-term multimedia rights operator, and the updated structure is designed to send the majority of that money back to the athletic department. Though JMI will get a cut.
JMI works with a lot of schools, not just Kentucky
Kentucky isn’t JMI’s only college client. The company also holds multimedia rights or campus partnerships with brands like Georgia, UCLA, San Diego State, Utah, Notre Dame, Pitt, Penn, Harvard, DePaul and several conferences including the Mountain West, Ivy League, Patriot League and Mid-American Conference.
That doesn’t prove anything about how the Kentucky deal is run day-to-day, but it does establish that JMI is operating at a national scale, not as a one-off Lexington operation.
But Kentucky's contract is different because JMI is the exclusive home of NIL for Kentucky, and no other school has tied that to an outside organization exclusively.
Key facts about Kentucky's JMI Sports deal, BBNIL Suite and revenue sharing
In August 2025, Kentucky and JMI announced BBNIL Suite, a new, integrated NIL collaborative built and operated jointly to serve UK student-athletes, coaches and corporate partners.
Here’s what the official descriptions say BBNIL does:
- It’s an opt-in program available to all 500+ UK student-athletes.
- It focuses on generating NIL revenue by leveraging UK’s 200+ corporate partners and by pursuing new local and national brands.
- It supports content creation and brand management, using facilities like the 20,000-square-foot “Downtown Studio” at Rupp Arena to produce professional-grade video, audio and digital content.
- It handles administrative work and contract fulfillment so that both student-athletes and companies have a centralized point of contact.
- It includes compliance oversight to keep deals in line with NCAA, school and state rules.
The stated goal from Kentucky’s side is to make BBNIL a recruiting advantage and a way to streamline NIL activity, not to replace collectives or outside deals, but to give athletes a structured, compliant option that touches a lot of different sports.
NIL and revenue-sharing basics Kentucky has put on record
Separate from the JMI partnership, Kentucky has also addressed the upcoming revenue-sharing model tied to the House v. NCAA settlement and related reforms. Public Q&A documents from the athletic department lay out a few key points:
Schools will be allowed, but not required, to share up to an estimated $20.5 million annually with athletes as part of the new system. Kentucky has said it intends to fully participate in that revenue sharing.
That $20.5 million figure is based on a percentage of average revenues from media rights, ticket sales, licensing and sponsorships across the power conferences, and when combined with scholarships, it effectively sends around 50% of relevant revenue toward athlete compensation, similar to models in pro sports.
NIL opportunities aren’t going away. Athletes can still do NIL deals. However, any agreement worth more than $600 will go through a national clearinghouse to evaluate fair market value.
There’s no mandated formula for how revenue sharing has to be split between teams or players. Kentucky has said it’s studying how to distribute money with an eye toward staying nationally competitive across all the sports it sponsors.
On the expense side, the department has been blunt: there is no “new money” tied to these changes. The added costs, revenue share, more scholarships, rising operations costs, will have to be covered by existing and future revenues like ticket sales, media money, fundraising and sponsorships, plus finding places to trim elsewhere.
A concrete example of how JMI is used in NIL work
If you want a real-life example of how JMI fits into the NIL picture, there’s a state purchase order laying out a contract between the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General and JMIS Kentucky LLC. The deal, worth $75,000, uses UK student-athletes to help produce and promote “Better Without It,” a youth-focused opioid prevention initiative.
That document spells out JMI’s role: arranging “NIL activations” with athletes, coordinating content capture and appearances, and managing approvals and deliverables on both sides. It’s a straightforward example of the state hiring JMI, who then works with Kentucky athletes under NIL rules to push a public-health campaign. The results can be seen here.
Bottom line
There’s plenty to debate about whether Kentucky’s overall NIL and revenue strategy is aggressive enough, or whether JMI’s role should be bigger, smaller or different. Those are fair opinion conversations.
But the facts are these:
- JMI has been Kentucky’s multimedia rights partner since 2014 and is locked in through 2040, with UK now receiving the majority of net revenue from that inventory.
- BBNIL Suite is a formal, opt-in NIL program jointly operated by UK and JMI to generate and manage NIL deals for student-athletes, with a heavy emphasis on content and compliance.
- Kentucky has publicly said it intends to fully participate in the new revenue-sharing model and will have to fund those obligations out of existing and future revenues, while NIL deals remain available under tighter oversight.
Everything beyond that, who’s happy, who’s not, what should change next, is where the rumors and arguments live. This is the foundation underneath all of that.
So while the administration remains silent, and the contract is protected under a PPP law (public-private partnership), the silence is not helping anyone. Fans demands answers, and Mitch needs to provide them.