Takeaways from How Brands Can Leverage NIL in 2022

brand collective high school nameimagelikeness nil student-athlete May 06, 2023

Takeaways from How Brands Can Leverage NIL in 2022:

Front Office Sports and OpenDorse recently released a whitepaper evaluating the first six months of college NIL including industry trends, tips when working with college athletes, and what the influencer marketing landscape with college athletes may look like in the future.

The paper is geared more toward brands. There’s a lot of great data in here, but here are a couple of nuggets that made stood out to CleanKonnect. Brands may find these interesting as they decide if and how to wade deeper into college athlete influencer marketing.

There is currently no federal law in place to support collegiate athletes using NIL. As such, the NCAA released an interim policy that athletes and schools are required to adhere to. Of note are the following three stipulations:
- An athlete cannot enter a “pay-for-play” agreement
- Athletes cannot receive impermissible recruiting inducements
- All NIL compensation must have proof of activity associated with it
In addition to the NCAA’s Interim Policy, colleges are also subject to state-by-state legislation related to NIL practices. According to the NCAA: For institutions in states with NIL laws, if an individual or member institution elects to engage in a NIL activity that is protected by law or executive order, the individual’s eligibility for and/or the membership institution’s full participation in NCAA athletics will not be impacted by the application of NCAA Bylaws.
The influencer marketing industry specifically is estimated to become worth up to $15 billion by 2022 according to Influencer Marketing Hub.
It is currently anticipated that $579 million will be spent on NIL deals in the first twelve-month period ending in July of 2022
NIL compensation share by sport: Football – 47.1%, Women’s Basketball – 27.3%, Men’s Basketball – 15.6%, Women’s Volleyball – 2.4%
65.7% of deal spending has come from national brands with an anticipated first twelve-month spend of $380.6 million. Local brands accounted for 34.3% of the total spend with an anticipated twelve-month expenditure of $198.8 million.
Brands can leverage “non-revenue” college athletes as ambassadors for products that fall outside of the general consumer space. For example, athletes studying STEM majors could be spokespeople for engineering companies while a statistics major could meaningfully move the needle for a data-science consultancy firm.