The hidden NIL economy of college sports
"Three main marketplaces emerge. Athletes earn money from corporate brands paying for their endorsement, from sales of merchandise and signed memorabilia and from booster-led NIL collectives. Collectives often pay de facto salaries in exchange for various services, such as charity work or meet and greets. Most of the biggest single payments came from corporations, which pay typically based on social media clout...
With brands paying for marketing potential, players with robust online engagement naturally can out-earn teammates who outperform them in games. LSU men’s basketball player Trace Young, for instance, played a total of two minutes last season. But with more than 350,000 followers across social media platforms, he scored endorsement deals that enabled him to gift all of his teammates with electric scooters each worth around
$1,000, according to two of his teammates. (LSU provided only aggregated data, not information about individual deals.)
Shelomi Sanders, the daughter of Colorado football coach Deion Sanders, played 11 minutes for the Colorado women’s basketball team last season. But she had nearly 700,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, where she posted ads for Marriott and Meta. The school’s NIL records show that a women’s basketball player signed deals with those companies that added up to
$42,500. That’s 42 percent of the total NIL income disclosed by last season’s team, which reached the Sweet 16..."