Q&A: IU basketball player making a play with software platform for college athletics

Born and raised in Bloomington, Anthony Leal always knew he wanted to be an Indiana Hoosier.

Now working toward a master’s degree in finance, Leal has seen the landscape in college basketball shift before his eyes, going from a system that forbade student-athletes from using their status for business purposes to one that the former Indiana Mr. Basketball himself argues has become something of a “Wild West” with the NCAA’s permission of name, image and likeness deals.

Leal has struck various deals with pizzerias and other local businesses since 2021, but he said his focus these days is on building his acumen for real estate and establishing his company, Motion Sports, as a go-to platform for collegiate athletic programs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you come to develop the Motion platform?

When NIL was brand new, there weren’t many [software] solutions for athletes, so I saw an opportunity to try and start a business during my final undergraduate year centered on that. What I found from taking that on was, there was a much bigger need not just for athletes but for everyone around college athletics, so I shifted from just an athlete focus to one with an athletic-department-wide application.

The platform essentially provides an operating system and covers anything from operations to compliance to team management to the movement of money and revenue share. It also can handle day-to-day activities like scheduling or communications for an athletic team, or dealing with workflows, care logs and hours. I really want it to be a seamless, one-stop solution for managing an athletic department, which is obviously a really complex model.

What has the initial response been to its deployment? Any takers so far?

We’ve gotten great traction so far and have three universities currently paying a yearly subscription to use our product, with another three in procurement—basically the last mile of getting through all the logistics of everything to become customers. And this is just in the few months since we got our product to a place where we could actually start to go to market, and we are still developing.

And apart from the schools that have signed on, we’ve had conversations with dozens and dozens of departments across the country, and in almost every conversation we’ve had, Motion has been well-received and embraced as a possible solution that schools would be interested in adopting in the future.

We’re really excited to continue seeing how we can help it grow so, hopefully at some point, every athletic department in the country is using our product.

Since NIL, the market has essentially been flooded with apps and other platforms to help athletic departments, so what makes yours so unique?

A lot of people have called it now a “Wild West” sort of thing, so for us, it’s just been about trying to provide stability—especially in knowing that, at the end of the day, there’s a good chance that NIL, revenue sharing and this whole realm that has come about will continue to change and evolve, that there will likely be new legislation related to all this. So it’s been having us in a position … to create stability for athletic departments and … build those relationships with trust and a product that schools can rely on, no matter what changes within college athletics.

What was it like to go from having a freshman year where you’re getting a lot of attention on the court, but couldn’t necessarily do anything with it because NIL wasn’t in place, to just a few years later you’re able to take on this long list of things in which you’re involved?

It’s been a blessing. Obviously, we’re blessed as it is, to just have the platform that we do as college athletes and the ability to inspire other people. But I think NIL just opens up so many more opportunities for athletes like myself to use the blessings and use our following and our fans to try to set ourselves up for success after basketball.

There’s always going to be the top 2% of athletes who might only be in college for a year or two, and then they’ll go about their professional career. But for that other 98% of college athletes, it provides us a chance to start that work, because as athletes we don’t have an opportunity for the typical summer internship because of training and other commitments. … This really just allows people like myself to kind of jump-start their career.

So, along with what you’re building at Motion, what other business ventures are you involved in?

I’ve been a licensed [real estate agent] in Indiana for nearly four years, and I’ve been able to learn a lot from that. I’ve always had an interest in real estate. It started mostly as residential, but for the last year now, I’ve been with 92c out of Indianapolis, with a focus more on the commercial side. I’m also working on a couple of startup companies based around real estate, but there’s not much to talk about there quite yet as it’s still very early on.

If you pursue real estate after finishing your master’s degree, do you have a preference on whether your focus is on residential or commercial?

I can honestly say I’d like a little bit of a mix. I’ve seen positives to both, and things I like and don’t like about both, but I think just in general, keeping doors open and keeping opportunities open is important. I want to utilize my personal brand, I guess, to try to generate some business by helping people buy and sell their homes or investment properties—whatever it may be. But just learning about the ins and outs of real estate and the potentials has been really fun.

Do you have specific plans in place for after you complete your degree?

It’s weird to say, because I’ve been working really hard on my businesses right now, but ultimately I’ve just been trying to stay present in the moment and not focusing on what’s next.

But after basketball, I certainly will continue to try to build Motion and spread it as a solution for college athletics programs. Obviously, being an athlete for the last five years, I’ve understood the flaws, and I’ve lived out the pains and issues around the administrative management of a team and how it could be done a lot more efficiently. I also have that passion for real estate, too, so I want to continue to explore that in the future.

Obviously, the team has encountered some challenges throughout the season, both on the court and related to the locker room with the planned resignation of head coach Mike Woodson. What have you learned from the season so far, and how do you apply those lessons to your career beyond basketball?

Obviously, with any sports season, there’s always ups and downs, and we’ve had to deal with some things that are uncommon. We’ve had a lot of emotions going around lately, but for us, it’s just focusing on the next game, the next opportunity, and knowing that we still have goals ahead of us that are attainable if we are able to commit ourselves to that.

Growing up in Bloomington and being a hometown kid, just understanding that this is the last season I’m ever going to get to be an Indiana men’s basketball player means that I’m just laying it all out on the line and giving it everything that I have, whether we win or lose.

Something that I’ve learned playing basketball that I think will carry over, and already has, into the business world is that it takes a team and really great relationships between a good group of people to make something special happen. Understanding that there’s going to be ups and downs is important, but the biggest part is just to stay true to the relationships that you’ve made and the work that you do, and trust that you know if you’re doing the right things every day, and you’re about the right things, have a good work ethic and your priorities are straight, then eventually, you’re bound to break through.•

—Mickey Shuey