NIL Categories, High School NIL, the WWE and More
Name, Image, Likeness Insider uses proprietary data and expert insights to explain the latest NIL developments.
what industries are creating the most nil activity
Using the Student-Athlete Insights survey community of 5,000 student-athletes, I conducted a large-scale study of the brand categories generating the most NIL deals. All NIL activities occurred between August 2021 and October 2022. In total, over 1,200 deals were analyzed. Here are five takeaways:
The leading category was Apparel/Footwear, which accounted for 20% of all NIL activity.
In second place at 14% were Restaurants - not surprising given the importance of local (versus national) deals. Of note was that Quick Serve Restaurants (QSR) accounted for half of the Restaurant total.
In third place was Technology. While NFT deals were prominent here, so too were software and gaming.
For the all media reporting on car deals (including those with dealerships), the Auto category represented a relatively small 4% of the total.
Financial Services was within the Top 5 categories at a healthy 8% of the total. It’s a growing category with 30% more deals done between June-October 2022 than in the six month prior to that.
nil has come to high school sports, but it’s not that simple
It seems like every month or two, the media reports that another state has moved from the “NIL Prohibited” column to the “NIL Permitted” side. For those of you who are counting, there are a total of 20 state (and Washington DC) associations that allow for High School NIL, leaving 31 associations that prohibit it.
But the observers that are willing to read past the headlines find a much more complex scenario. Here are just a few examples:
In many states that “prohibit” NIL, there are a number of allowable NIL activities, most commonly “instruction” in the form of camps, clinics, and private coaching. Certain types of social media influencer activity is also permitted - with restrictions.
There is a tremendous gap between the compensation that high school athletes think they will earn and what most will actually earn. In numerous surveys I've conducted, the median compensation for college student-athletes is about $65 per NIL activity. I don’t think we have any evidence to indicate that High School NIL will look substantially different when it gets to scale.
There are only about 500,000 college student-athletes and we have not come close to successfully educating the majority of them on NIL. By comparison, there are 8,000,000 high school athletes in the US. It’s going to be an enormous undertaking to educate high school athletes, coaches, administrators.
On a final note, I want to say how proud I am to be working with a number of state high school athletic associations - including those in Missouri and Michigan. I’m seeing first hand the dedication these staffs put forth to do what’s best for high school athletes and the high school sports experience.
AN NIL case study worth studying
For those of you looking for best in class examples of using NIL to benefit your brand or business, take a look at WWE’s “Next In Line” program. Now in its second iteration, the program was developed to recruit future WWE stars. Next In Line gives select college student-athletes a mechanism to go from college athletics to the WWE. Athletes are provided access to a wide range of WWE resources, including the WWE Performance Center, media training, community relations and more. Once athletes complete the program, some are offered a WWE contract.
I’ll be serving as moderator for the session called “The Evolution of WWE’s NIL program - Next In Line” at the Sports Business Journal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum on December 7, 2022. I’ll be speaking with former NCAA student-athletes - now WWE wrestlers - Bianca Belair and Joe Spivak. For in-person and virtual options, go to https://events.sportsbusinessjournal.com/2022-iaf/p/1.
michigan state’s EverGreen NIL Celebration is a bellwether
Malik Hall (basketball) won the Spartan Success award for “immense success in their NIL endeavors.”
Michigan State took supporting NIL to another level last week, hosting what is believed to be the first formal event to recognize the NIL achievements of its student-athletes.
The idea for the EverGreen NIL Celebration came from the inaugural NIL Summit hosted in Atlanta in June, which celebrated NIL achievements from student-athletes from across the country.
Recognized were two Spartan athletics programs and three individual student-athletes. Taking home awards were the women's gymnastics, women's basketball, men's basketball senior Malik Hall, football redshirt sophomore Maliq Carr, and wrestling junior Chase Saldate.
Bill teaches NIL in College Sports at the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business. He consults and educates brands, universities, and sports organizations on Name, Image, and Likeness. Bill’s a SportsBusiness Journal Forty Under 40 Award winner and former co-founder of the athlete & event marketing agency Fuse, which he operated for 20+ years before selling in 2019.