Arian Foster is Going Public

[strife]

Link

On Thursday the New York Times reported that Foster would be the first athlete to go public through a new company called Fantex Holdings. Fantex has established a market in which people can purchase and trade shares of athletes’ future earnings, in a sort of stock market for jocks. The company has persuaded regulators that this counts as investing, not gambling.

As of today, anyone over the age of 18 can buy stock in Foster, claiming a stake of his future earnings in increments as low as $50. Fantex is selling $10.5 million worth of stock, which represents 20 percent of Foster’s future earnings. The company takes $500,000 in fees and gives $10 million to Foster. To oversimplify a bit, Foster ends up ahead on the deal if he makes less than $50 million from this point on.

[Vanraw]

insane.

[OrsunVZ]

Batshit crazy.

Exploitation of the rules - Kill it dead. Somebody. Anybody!

[Breand]

NPR did a piece on this and inferred that it is a bit of a scam, because part of the contract terms is that Fantex, can at any time it wants, convert 'Arian Foster' shares into 'Fantex' shares, so no matter which athlete you are investing in, you are really investing in the viability of Fantex as a company.

[TinStar]

Yeah I saw this a little while back. I am surprised the NFL doesn't squash this because you are giving an outside organization power over an athlete. It's just like any publicly traded company, the company is supposed to make as much money as it possibly can because it is beholden to stock holders. It's complete bullshit. This basically ensures that (as a Texans fan, so this hits home) Arian Foster will not resign with his current team because he will be out for the biggest contract possible(unless he is franchised). It's like signing with Scott Boras as a baseball player.