The rules, in plain language

1. Who can use Next Up

You must be 18 or older to create an account of any kind, to buy, to sell, or to be an athlete on Next Up. We ask for your date of birth and we verify age and identity where the law or our partners require it. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18 we close it and reverse what we can.

You must be a person, not a bot, and you must give us true information about yourself. One person, one account. You are responsible for what happens on your account, so keep your sign-in method (your face, fingerprint or device passkey) to yourself.

Athletes on Next Up are adults acting for themselves. Schools, clubs, teams, leagues, agents and collectives are not parties to any sale and receive nothing from any sale. If a rule of your school, league or governing body restricts what you may do with your name, image or likeness, it is your responsibility to follow it, and we will help you find out; if a rule says no, the answer is no.

2. What a card is, and what it is not

A card is a numbered digital collectible made by an athlete to mark a moment in her career. Each edition is limited and the number of copies is fixed when it is made. The card's ownership record is kept on a public ledger that we do not control, in an account that belongs to you.

A card is a collectible. It is not an investment, a security, a share in the athlete or in Next Up, a promise of any future payment, a ticket, or a right to the athlete's time. Nothing on Next Up promises that a card will hold or gain value, and you should not buy one expecting that it will. Prices on the resale market are set by collectors, not by us.

When you own a card you own that copy of the collectible and the record that says you were its holder and since when. The athlete keeps the rights to her name, image, likeness and the photo or video on the card, and gives you a personal, non-commercial licence to display the card. You may not use the card or the athlete's image to advertise anything, to imply endorsement, or in any way that is unlawful or that would embarrass her.

3. Athletes: making and selling cards

You may only make cards of yourself. You confirm that you own or have permission to use every photo, clip and name on a card, and that nothing on it infringes anyone else's rights or any rule that applies to you.

You set the price of each card. The floor is $20 and there is no ceiling. On a first sale you receive 80 percent of the price and Next Up receives 20 percent. On every resale of your card, for as long as the card exists, you receive 10 percent of the resale price, the seller receives 80 percent and Next Up receives 10 percent. These splits are enforced by the contract that settles the sale and cannot be changed for one athlete or one sale.

You are the seller of record on every first sale of your cards. Your share is paid to your own account in the same transaction as the sale; Next Up never holds it. To move money from your account to your bank you verify your identity with our payout partner, once, under its terms. We do not pay anonymous sellers. Money you receive is income to you and you are responsible for your own taxes; we provide the records you need.

You may stop making new cards at any time. Cards already sold stay with their owners.

4. Collectors: buying, funding your account, gifts

Prices are shown in US dollars. On every purchase, first sale or resale, you pay the price plus a marketplace service fee of 6 percent of the price, shown before you confirm. The fee is the same on a first sale and a resale.

You pay from your own Next Up account, which is created for you the first time you sign in and is protected by your face, fingerprint or device passkey. You add funds to it with Apple Pay or a debit card through our funding partner, which processes the payment under its own terms and may ask you to confirm your identity. Some banks decline these payments; if yours does, you can ask someone to buy the card for you as a gift, sign in to an account with our funding partner, or pay from funds you already hold. Next Up is not a party to the funding payment and never holds your funds.

When you confirm a purchase, the payment goes from your account directly to the athlete (or the seller) and to Next Up in one step, and the card is recorded to you. There is no in-between account. A purchase you confirm is complete when the ledger records it, usually within a few seconds.

You can buy a card as a gift for someone else by giving us their email address. They claim it by signing in; their name goes on the record as the first holder. A gift that is not claimed within 30 days is returned to you. The person you gift to must also be 18 or over.

5. Reselling

You may sell a card you own on Next Up at a fixed price or at auction, and any collector may make you an offer on a card you own, whether or not it is listed. Prices, bids and offers are in whole US dollars, at or above the $20 floor. When a card sells, you receive 80 percent, the athlete 10 percent and Next Up 10 percent, and the buyer pays the 6 percent service fee on top.

Next Up never holds anyone's money, so a bid or an offer is a promise to buy, not a payment. When an auction ends, the highest bidder has 24 hours to pay; if she does not, the card is offered to the next highest bidder, and after three bidders have not paid, the auction ends without a sale. When you accept an offer, the buyer has 24 hours to pay; if she does not, the card stays with you. When a buyer chooses a fixed-price card, it is held for her for 20 minutes while she pays. The card moves to the buyer only once her payment is confirmed.

You may take down a fixed-price listing, or an auction that has no bids, at any time before a buyer starts to pay. An auction that has bids runs to its end. If a payment reaches you after the card has already gone to someone else, we refund that buyer in full.

Some cards cannot be resold. A card that an athlete marks as non-transferable, and any card issued to an athlete's supporter before the athlete turned 18, stays with its first holder for as long as it exists. This is shown on the card before you buy.

We do not make markets, bid on cards, buy cards back, guarantee any floor price, or lend against cards. We do not give investment advice and nothing on Next Up is investment advice.

6. Refunds and reversals

Cards are digital goods and a completed purchase is final, the same as a concert ticket. There are two exceptions. If a purchase fails partway, so that you paid and the card was never recorded to you, we refund you in full. If we remove a card because it broke these terms or the law, we refund the current holder the price she paid on Next Up.

Refunds are paid by Next Up from its own funds to the account you paid from, within five business days of our decision. To ask for one, write to us at the address at the end of these terms with your order number. Because the athlete's share is paid to her at the moment of sale, a refund does not take money back from the athlete except where she was the cause of the removal.

7. Your account and the sunset clause

Your Next Up account is yours. Your sign-in is a passkey held on your device and by your device's maker, not by us, and we cannot sign in as you. Your passkey is backed up by your device maker (for example iCloud Keychain or Google Password Manager) and recovered through them, not through us; we cannot restore an account we never held the key to, so keep that backup turned on.

The contract that keeps the record of every card has a sunset clause that nobody, including us, can switch off. If Next Up stops responding for long enough (a ninety-day heartbeat, then one hundred eighty days of silence, then a ninety-day release window), transfers open and every holder can move her cards anywhere. Your cards do not depend on Next Up staying in business.

8. What you may not do

Do not use Next Up if you are under 18. Do not impersonate anyone, make cards of anyone but yourself, or upload anything you do not have the right to upload. Do not use Next Up to launder money, to evade sanctions, to manipulate prices, to wash trade, or to make a card look more traded than it is. Do not scrape, attack, reverse engineer or interfere with the service. Do not harass athletes or other collectors. Do not use a card, an athlete's name or the Next Up name to sell, advertise or endorse anything without written permission.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these rules, remove listings, and, where the law or a partner requires it, report what we find. Cards already recorded to an account are not taken from it by a suspension; you keep what you own, and the sunset clause protects it.

9. Our partners

Funding your account and moving money to a bank are provided by regulated partners under their own terms, which you accept when you use them. Identity verification is carried out by those partners or by a verification provider on our behalf. Photos and video are hosted by a storage provider. We choose partners carefully, but their services are theirs, and a decision they make about you (for example, declining a payment) is not a decision we can reverse.

10. Content, feedback and our name

You keep the rights to what you upload. You give Next Up a licence to display, copy and format it as needed to run the service, to show your cards to the people who own them, and to promote the athlete's page and Next Up, for as long as the content is on Next Up. The Next Up name, wordmark, Seal and design are ours; the athlete's name and likeness are hers.

If you send us ideas or feedback we may use them without owing you anything.

11. What we promise and what we do not

We promise to run Next Up honestly, to pay the splits exactly as stated, to never hold your money, to tell you the truth about what a card is, and to keep your record safe as far as it depends on us. Beyond that, Next Up is provided as it is. We do not promise that it will always be available, error-free, or that any card will sell or hold value. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable to you for indirect or consequential losses, and our total liability to you for anything arising from these terms is limited to the amounts you paid to Next Up in fees in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not allow us to limit.

12. Disputes

If something goes wrong, write to us first; most things are fixed in a day. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to its conflict of law rules. Any dispute that we cannot resolve between us will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Delaware, and you and we each consent to their jurisdiction. Where your local law gives you rights that cannot be taken away by these terms, those rights stand.

13. Changes

We will change these terms as the product grows. When we do, we post the new version here with a new effective date and, for changes that matter, tell account holders by email at least 14 days before they take effect. Using Next Up after that date means you accept the new terms. The splits, the floor and the sunset clause are fixed in the contract and are not changed by an update to these terms.