Menu

NIL Takes Center Stage In College Recruiting


The NCAA recently recommended a framework of regulations for student athletes to commercially monetize their name, image and likeness (NIL), which will be debated, evaluated and finalized by January 2021.

The current recommendations restrict a college athletic program’s direct involvement in any student athlete NIL commercial sponsorship deals. However, college programs will continue to have the opportunity to help maximize the NIL value of these commercial opportunities for their student athletes in another way – through the editorial (non-commercialized) brand-building initiatives that have existed in many innovative college athletics programs for several years now.

College athletic programs exist to maximize the potential of their student athletes and brand-building has become another value-add that is integral for coaches to build into their student athletes’ experiences.

Brand-building is best defined by the growth of a student athlete’s social media audience, both in number of followers and the percentage of those followers who engage with their social media posts. Forward-thinking college athletic programs are building student athlete’s brands by shooting content around their daily journey and providing them with access to editorially share that content to their social media channels.

The most potent brand-building steps for any athlete look like this:

1. Work hard to make plays and win games.
2. Tell your story editorially on social media.
3. Create commercial opportunities for your NIL.

Regardless of the final student athlete NIL regulations, this is quickly becoming the centerpiece of recruiting. Coaches and staff must be able to communicate the data trends around the social media brand growth of their current and former student athletes.

They must do so in a way that helps prospective student athletes comprehend the proven “brand effect” that their college athletics program will have on the personal brand of the student athlete, and the strategy in place to support the student athlete in realizing that brand effect on their personal social media channels.

It’s clear that the majority of the student athlete’s commercial sponsorship deals in the NIL era will take place on social media because of:

Time Efficiency: Social media endorsements require the least amount of a student athlete’s time to fulfill.
Transparency: The FTC requires disclosure of sponsorships that take place on a student athlete’s social media channel(s).
Fair Market Value: Influencer marketing transaction values are determined by objective metrics such as student athlete follower quantity, engagement rate and posting activity.

Regardless of how long student athletes play for their college program, they have a concrete opportunity to leave with a bigger social media following and thus, more commercial NIL value than they arrived on campus with their freshman year.

Zion Williamson arrived at Duke with more than one million Instagram followers, only to leave after just one season with the Blue Devils, with more than three million followers.

Zion executed the athlete brand-building steps flawlessly and it paid off.

1. Work hard to make plays and win games – Zion had one of the best freshman seasons in the history of college basketball.
2. Tell your story editorially on social media – Duke provided access to editorial content for Zion to share daily to his Instagram Stories and post weekly to his Instagram account.
3. Create commercial opportunities for your NIL – Zion grew his commercial value on social media by more than 500%, creating more valuable endorsement deals for himself once he declared for the 2019 NBA draft.

Kansas Jayhawks point guard Devon Dotson declared for the 2020 NBA draft after two strong seasons, where KU helped him grow his Instagram following editorially. Devon grew his Instagram audience from 33,000 to more than 63,000 followers, realizing more than 75% of his commercial NIL value on social, during his two seasons at KU.

Winning games will always attract the top high school prospects to your program. In the NIL era, these prospects will want their college program to help build their brand editorially, so that they’ll have more commercial opportunities.

Jim Cavale is founder and CEO of INFLCR.