Meanwhile, Ruiz this week said that recent news surrounding his businesses, including an eyebrow-raising filing with the Securities and Exchange commission, will not impact his ability or willingness to continue paying Miami Hurricanes student athletes to promote his businesses. In an SEC filing last week, Ruiz said that any financial information, including filed earnings releases, investor presentations and other communications released by his company LifeWallet over the past year “should no longer be relied upon.”
Ruiz said, via text messages, that “LifeWallet continues to remain active.
The delayed filing was because of a restatement in accounting whereby an entity that owns claims was now consolidated into the LifeWallet financials and had to be reconciled. The restatement as publicly disclosed related only to non-cash items and has no impact on cash.”
Asked if he plans to pull back on new NIL deals, Ruiz said: “We continue to do business as usual. Nothing has changed or is changing generally. But as any business, one always looks at how to maximize investments. We have a very good NIL platform.” Ruiz added that “all athletes have always gotten paid and continue to get paid. Those contracts are in place and are properly budgeted for. LifeWallet continues to do business as usual.”
Ruiz has given NIL deals to more than 120 UM student athletes, who in turn must promote his companies, LifeWallet and in some cases, Cigarette Racing Team. Whether the total value of Ruiz’s deals diminish over time remains to be seen. It might be difficult to sustain giving select transfers the type of two-year, $800,000 deal that Ruiz awarded UM guard Nijel Pack to promote LifeWallet after he transferred last spring from Kansas State. Pack was a key cog in UM’s run to the program’s first Final Four.
But Ruiz insisted that
he’s not averse to selectively giving deals in that lofty financial range ($800,000 over two years). “Deals of different dollar values are always measured against a ROI,” Ruiz said, referring to return on investment. “The Nijel Pack deal, I submit, may be one of the best deals ever in NIL from an ROI perspective.”
But do deals of that size make financial sense any more? “LifeWallet continues business as usual and will study all business opportunities,” he replied. UM is vigorously pursuing players in the football and basketball portals but hasn’t added any players since another football portal window opened Saturday and since the basketball season ended. That has led some fans to conclude that Ruiz is not making six figure NIL offers for basketball players. Is that true?
“That is totally off the mark,” he said. “UM just finished their season. Both LifeWallet as well as other NIL entities directly connected with UM have resources to make NIL deals.” Schools are permitted to discuss potential NIL opportunities with transfers but cannot, as an example, set up a meeting between Ruiz and a recruit or transfer.
Read more at:
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/...y-jackson/article274482846.html#storylink=cpy
