Bryson Warren is probably one of the few teenagers you’ll meet whose high school job comes with a guaranteed six-figure income.
Warren, 17, is among the first class of high school athletes to join Overtime Elite, a New York-based company that recruits – and pays – some of the top-ranked high school and teenaged basketball players from around the world to play at its academy in Atlanta.
The athletes at Overtime attend classes and study for a diploma. They compete against each other and other high school basketball teams from across the country. They also offer a base annual salary of at least $100,000 for every student-athlete, with on-court performance bonuses potentially pushing that figure above $1 million.
Bryson Warren, a 17-year-old professional high school athlete, dribbles a basketball in the Overtime Elite arena in Atlanta.
Source: Overtime Elite
For Warren, who grew up near Little Rock, Arkansas, and was ranked by ESPN as the 14th-best U.S. high school basketball player in his age group, the appeal was obvious. He and the 26 other student-athletes at Overtime jumped at the rare opportunity to earn big money as high school athletes, while they work toward hopefully making an even bigger leap to the NBA.
“Not too many 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds can say they made at least $100K,” Warren tells CNBC Make It. “We’re just really getting a head start on life, just playing the game we love.”
What is Overtime Elite?
Founded in 2016 by Dan Porter and Zack Weiner, a pair of alumni from the Hollywood talent agency WMA, Overtime is an experiment in both sports and entertainment.
The league, which kicked off its first competitive season last year, livestreams games and posts player highlights for Overtime’s millions of followers on like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. According to Overtime, the content it creates featuring teen athletes like Warren is viewed online more than 18 billion times per year.
Overtime has also raised more than $100 million from investors including Jeff…