NIL NETWORK INSIGHT
Recap: The NAIA passed their NIL legislation in October of 2020. While athletes are required to report their deals to their athletic departments, they are not required to report to the NAIA for “information gathering purposes”. Due to this, Kristi Dosh was able to analyze just 14 deals. Six sports were represented: basketball, cross-country, football, lacrosse, track and field, volleyball. Three of the student athletes were male, while 11 were female. Deals ranged from free product to monetary compensation that ranged $30-50, and most were done through the platform Playbooked, which was founded by an NAIA athlete.
Observations: For 99% of athletes, I think that NIL may look very similar at the NCAA level. The deals will mostly be product endorsements that are done through social media and the payout will be for product and/or potentially a small amount of money. For the 1% who will make substantial money off of their NIL, they are either the athletes who have spent a lot of time developing their personal brand/social media following OR are the athletes that are bringing in millions of dollars for the NCAA and their school every year.
An interesting note in this article is that the NAIA decided that it’s up to individual schools as to whether a student athlete can use its intellectual property as part of NIL activities. AKA a student could ask (and receive!) permission to wear their jersey for an appearance. I’m curious is there’s a potential for something similar at the NCAA level: maybe an institution could “license” out their IP to an athlete who requested it for an upcoming event? I know it’s a pipe dream but it seems like it could benefit both the athlete and their university.
The NAIA became the first college sports organization to pass name, image and likeness legislation last October.
I’ve been able to review 14 deals that have been reported by student athletes to the NAIA. Student athletes are required to report to their athletic departments, but they are not required to fill out the NAIA’s information-gathering form. This means there are more deals that have not been reported directly to the NAIA.
Six sports are represented in the deals reported to the NAIA: basketball, cross-country, football, lacrosse, track and field, volleyball. Three of the student athletes were male, while 11 were female. Deals ranged from free product to monetary compensation that ranged $30-50.
Twelve of the deals originated through Playbooked, described as a “one-stop platform for collegiate athletes to field offers to post promoted social content and/or send personalized messages to fans and GET PAID for it.” Playbooked says 450 student athletes have signed up and that half have already worked on campaigns and been paid.
