Basepath Co-Founder and CEO Thomas Thomas Jr. recently led the Basepath GM seminar with President Bob Agramonte and Product Manager Dan Fuller. The seminar provided an in depth look at the product and its real world uses.
4:40 GM Breakdown
For the General Manager tool demo, we broke down the tool into three key layers. First, we covered the administrative layer—a foundational part that, while not the most thrilling, is essential for ensuring the right people in your organization have appropriate access and permissions. This foundation is crucial for enabling the advanced data analytics and competitive features we’ve designed to help your program succeed.
The remaining two layers focus on analytics: first, department-level insights, and then player-level analytics, both essential for building the most competitive rosters.
The GM tool is fully integrated with Basepath’s existing products, allowing for coordinated, secure access across the organization. Staff can be invited into the GM system with permissions tailored to specific roles, teams, or broader administrative functions, ensuring appropriate access to deals, tasks, payouts, and contract operations.
Administrators can set a department-wide budget, customized with components like revenue sharing, collectives, brand deals, and scholarships, and then allocate these funds across individual teams, enhancing financial management at every level.
8:00 Budgeting and Roster Management
The next part of Basepath’s GM tool demonstration highlights team budget allocation and roster management capabilities. Once the department-wide budget is established, funds can be strategically allocated to individual teams, like football, with clear breakdowns by source (e.g., $10 million from revenue share, $4 million from collective funds). The GM tool enables flexible roster planning within each team’s budget, allowing administrators to create an official roster for each season while also experimenting with multiple mock rosters. This approach provides a way to test different budget allocations and team compositions without affecting official data.
The GM tool’s tagging system, built from customer feedback, allows quick categorization of players, such as marking injuries or highlighting top contributors. Filters on the left enable users to narrow down by graduation year or position, making roster analysis straightforward. Additionally, the depth chart view visually represents budget allocations, open spots, and player tags for easy insights. Users can then add positions directly, with the system automatically filtering for relevant players, connecting seamlessly to Basepath’s broader contract database for easy roster adjustments. The GM tool displays your full roster, showing each player’s status against commitments from coaches or administrators versus real-time updates on contract dollars and payouts. By clicking on a player’s profile, you can view all rosters they’re part of, along with their contract details and payout history.
The roster review also offers a Commitments Table, enabling tracking of funding sources for each player. For instance, you can allocate funds such as $10,000 from revenue sharing and $10,000 from the collective. The analytics tab provides department-level insights, displaying how the budget is allocated across teams. Football, for example in this demo, receives $16.5 million, while ice hockey has exceeded its $4.5 million allocation with $5.1 million in spending.
Further analytics offer a detailed breakdown of funding sources, showcasing allocations such as $10 million earmarked for revenue sharing. Performance analytics allow for team and position-specific budget analysis, comparing allocations to benchmarks like NFL data. For instance, with quarterbacks typically at 15% of the budget, seeing 17% allocated can indicate need for adjustment. Customizable filters offer insights by player tags or groups, like retention and recruiting, allowing targeted reallocation to maximize return on investment.
18:30 Real Time Uses
The tool aims to empower GMs and administrators by providing a clear view of an athlete’s complete compensation package. This comprehensive approach combines revenue sharing, brand deals, and other benefits, allowing teams to communicate the full value of an athlete’s offer in real terms. Aggregating these figures across rosters offers a holistic look at each team’s and the department’s total investment profile.
A critical aspect discussed is how schools are utilizing the tool to manage rosters, especially with upcoming transfer periods. By tracking budget allocations across positions and eligibility years, teams can see how funds flow over an athlete’s tenure, helping them plan for transitions like incoming transfers. The tool’s Fair Market Value (FMV) feature garners significant interest, offering schools a dollar-based evaluation of athlete value. This FMV insight helps GMs make informed, data-driven decisions as they allocate budgets and prepare for changes across their rosters.
21:00 Fair Market Value
Basepath’s approach to calculating Fair Market Value (FMV) is grounded in real payment data directly connected to athlete contributions at over 70 campuses nationwide, where they handle over $100 million in transactions to athletes annually. Unlike marketplaces primarily focused on connecting brands to athletes for sponsorships or endorsements, Basepath’s data captures the value of athlete roles within their programs, with payments typically flowing from collectives and universities rather than brand deals. This approach allows FMV calculations to remain highly relevant to the unique demands of college athletics, aligning closely with the specific market value of athletes by role, position, and eligibility year.
FMV values within the system update in real-time, with each new contract entry and payment processed contributing to an evolving understanding of the current market for college athletes. This daily update mechanism means that GMs and administrators can rely on accurate, up-to-the-minute data to guide their decision-making. Many users have shared that having access to these dynamic FMV insights has significantly improved their ability to communicate with stakeholders—whether they’re negotiating with agents, discussing value with athletes and their families, or allocating budgets across their teams. By establishing a clear, data-backed baseline of what the market is paying, the tool supports strategic planning and recruitment efforts, giving schools a distinct advantage in assembling competitive teams and managing resources more effectively across the roster.
28:00 Suite of Services
Basepath’s product suite offers a seamless, interconnected experience for athletic departments by integrating operations and general management (GM) tools into one cohesive platform. When a user becomes a partner, they gain access to both tools, eliminating the need to manage separate systems or export data between platforms. Payments made through the operations (Ops) software automatically sync with the GM platform and vice versa, providing a seamless experience. Users can view rosters, manage contracts, and handle payments within one interface, which simplifies administration and enhances workflow efficiency.
Additionally, Basepath recognizes the unique needs of each institution. With various approaches to roster management, budget priorities, and conference-specific requirements, Basepath’s tools are designed with flexibility to accommodate these differing strategies, ensuring that the platform can meet each athletic department’s distinct needs effectively.