Starting next year, college athletes in the state of Florida will be eligible for compensation in situations where their name, image, or likeness is being used.

The announcement was made Friday afternoon by Governor Ron DeSantis at the University of Miami.

The governor said that he “viewed it as something that was a matter of fairness,”  when it came to allowing the athletes to be paid.

“We’re not talking about, you get a scholarship to Florida State and Miami and the universities are gonna pay you to play. That’s not what we’re talking about,” DeSantis said. “But if you have a situation where you have some of the great athletes, particularly in sports like football and basketball, whose name, image, and likeness is being used to make millions and millions of dollars, and they don’t have the opportunity to get any of that, there’s something fundamentally unfair for that,” DeSantis said.

“If EA Sports wants to do NCAA Football and they’re gonna have some of these guys who are great players, they’re gonna use their name, image, and likeness, then there can be some compensation for that,” DeSantis continued.

The Florida Board of Governors are still hammering out the finer details of the bill but it is expected to go into affect by July 1st of 2021.