In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in NCAA vs. Alston that student-athletes could become NIL agents or ambassadors. The athletes could still be recruited for sports while receiving compensation for their likeness. NIL deals have been controversial for some time due to concerns that the compensation of college athletes would change the atmosphere of college sports to be more like professional sports.
With the rise of product promotion among influencers on social media, NIL deals have increasingly become more available to D1 and D2 student athletes. NIL stands for Name, Image and Likeness, which encompasses the right of publicity for the promotion of a company through an individual. In top-tier D1 schools, athletes with NIL deals can make up to $6 million in a given year off of promoting a brand or product. At a smaller D2 school like Union, NIL deals tend to look different for the athletes who get asked to or find promotional opportunities.
Alex Johnson is a pitcher on the men’s baseball team and is a sophomore sports management major. He has a role as an ambassador with an athletic apparel company called Rhoback. This deal doesn’t necessarily include direct compensation from the company; rather, it includes perks like receiving a 20% off code for apparel, and when distributed to others, Johnson receives a commission. Unlike most typical NIL deals, which occur through DMs on Instagram or your coach, Johnson heard about this opportunity through his grandparents’ neighbor during the last semester of high school and soon became an ambassador. When he came to Union, Johnson had to get Rhoback approved, as all NIL deals are processed through the school.
“I had no problem getting it approved by the school, because that’s what you have to do when you have something like this, to make sure it’s real, and especially at Union, it has to be something that’s not against Union’s values,” Johnson said.
Macey Lee, a senior on the women’s basketball team at Union, is a cell and molecular biology major and appreciates the way that Union handles NIL deals, having a couple of her own.
“I think it is better [at Union], because you can have free range to go do it yourself, but they’re not like encouraging it, but they’re not discouraging it either,” Lee said. “They just want to make sure that it’s fair and that if there was something to come up, they would probably share it evenly amongst the players.”
Lee currently has three deals. One with BUBBL’R, which is a flavored carbonated water company, one with PBfit, a peanut butter protein company and Celsius, known for famously for their energy drinks. Like Johnson, Lee doesn’t receive direct compensation but rather receives commission from sharing her code. Part of her contracts for promoting these companies includes sharing posts, creating posts, posting on her story a certain number of times during the month and, in return, she receives a certain amount of the products throughout the year. Lee talked about how balancing multiple companies at the same time can be difficult, and sometimes you forget to post.
“It’s kind of hard to keep up with it […] because you just forget, and you don’t have somebody or something telling you,” Lee said. “Sometimes I feel like my followers don’t want to see that I’m just posting them on my story all the time.”
An athlete may not be very active on social media when they sign the NIL deal, but they must become more consistent with posting and keeping their followers updated. For some, this requires a change to how they view social media since posting is now a job and no longer just about their personal life, but is used instead for a PR platform. On the other side of the coin, the companies are using the experience and credibility of collegiate athletes to advertise their products and to increase revenue.
At D1 and sometimes D2 schools, the contracts that student athletes sign not only affect their bank accounts, but also team dynamics and the likelihood of transferring. Athletes could be getting paid astronomical amounts as part of their NIL deal, but sit on the bench every game — affecting team unity and the reason behind choosing schools.
“Kids come and bounce just because of money, so it’s hard to really keep a good culture with those people,” Lee said. “It’s hard on the coaches because they’re constantly having to find new people all the time, and at Union, ones that fit our dynamic are hard to find.”
When I asked Johnson if his deal with Rhoback affects the dynamic with his teammates, he laughed.
“It’s kind of like a running joke that I’m getting paid, and when I wear something or somebody I know wears something, it’s like, ‘Hey, I got that from you’ or something like that,” Johnson said. “What I’m doing is a pretty small margin for what it could be, so there’s been no issues. It’s been pretty fun.”
Even though compared to D1 schools, these deals aren’t nearly on the same scale, the fact that athletes in D2 are getting deals is a huge shift from less than four years ago. Because it is such a fairly new development in college sports, athletes are often having to adapt and adjust to the new rules and regulations that schools put out. For D2 athletes, they are usually left to navigate the PR side of their social media by themselves and determine whether they should ask for more money as their season improves. These NIL deals can be difficult for these athletes to maintain, but the benefits of a little extra money and gaining a wider audience through these promotions can boost their sports career even after graduation.
