Category: Athlete Social Media

Athlete Social Media, College, Sponsorships

A Creator Economy Founder’s Practical Guide to NIL, Niche, and Negotiation

The athlete marketing complex and the creator economy are converging.

It was bound to happen. Athletes were among the earliest proto-influencers. So it only makes sense that, as opportunities in the creator economy grew and diversified, athletes could build on their influential platforms and become multi-hyphenate creators. But there’s an inherent paradox for elite athletes here: the tunnel-vision dedication and discipline that propels them to excellence in their sport can seem to brush aside extracurricular opportunities for some, while fueling a measured approach for others.

Most athletes only have a limited window of time to even consider the opportunity to develop and monetize their brand. A minuscule portion will get big stages in the pros or in prominent international competition, but the vast majority won’t. So their few years in college comprise that small window, though that doesn’t mean it’s easy or a given. Rachel Maeng has a unique POV having had various perspectives of the creator economy, athletics, and running a business. She competed in college sports, built her personal brand, negotiated brand deals for others, and counseled creators and athletes alike. She dispels the notion that every college athlete is engaging in ‘NIL,’ the shorthand for referencing all things related to activating and monetizing the name, image, and likeness of athletes.

“I talked to so many athletes in college and high school that are like, ‘I’m not doing NIL deals; honestly, I don’t have any time,'” said Maeng, who was a coxswain on the Rutgers rowing team during her college years. “In reality, I would say from what I’ve seen, maybe like 10% of each roster actually in college actively participates or is even interested in doing NIL deals. Because think about it, like, when I was in college, we were practicing every day at 7 a.m., and then I would go to class, and then I would have 3 p.m. lifts, and then I would go to class, and then I was in clubs and organizations…When does that leave time for me to create content and negotiate and do all those things? It doesn’t. And in reality, some kids cannot time manage as well as some other kids, so they’re not able to participate because they would fail classes or they would fail at their athletic opportunities.”

Given that use it or lose it nature of the college athletics platform, however, there can be a degree of pressure to squeeze it all in. You can’t leave money on the table, your peers are doing it, family and friends may expect it — there’s no shortage of factors that can weigh on a student-athlete’s mind. Maeng sees the struggles firsthand and recognizes not just the burden placed upon student-athletes trying to balance it all, but also the gap in education for those wading into the NIL game.

“I think the media and the social media that we see about, like, Oh, this kid made $8 million, so and so athlete just made a couple hundred thousand [dollars] working with Nike. That’s great, and that’s a great opportunity for that athlete who can handle it, who maybe has a team around them that can handle that. But if you can’t do it, you can’t do it,” said Maeng. “I think that we can’t put pressure on athletes to be able to participate in NIL while not giving them the education about how to do everything that comes with being your own business and running a business. And then there’s the mental health aspect that we were talking about before. There are just so many factors, I think, that go into it. You can’t expect it.”

But while NIL development and deals may not be for everyone, there are still a lot of student-athletes who do choose to wade into those waters, doing the quasi-creator and influencer thing alongside their athletic and academic endeavors. One of the best parts of college athletics, too, is the sheer diversity of student-athletes. Not only the sports they play, but their background and interests, present a panoply of ways to cultivate an audience that’s attractive for a brand.

There are only a select few athletes in the pros, let alone college, that have universal broad appeal. The same goes for creators, which is why the majority of creators lean into specific segments or niches, which can make them appealing and authentic endorsers for partners. It’s simplistic, but sometimes effective at a surface level, to jump on trends and pop culture topics, but generic audiences and content, absent immense, undeniable scale, do not make for an effective NIL. Brand deals shouldn’t feel random, but organic and expected. Maeng explained how she’d advise athletes, informed by her work with athletes and non-athlete creators alike.

“As it pertains to athletes, you can go out, and you can dance and do only trends and get a good amount of followers,” said Maeng, who was CEO and Founder of influencer and athlete-driven brand marketing and media production company GEN Agency before selling it. “But as soon as you start advertising, I don’t know, Nike or Jordan or you start advertising Kellogg’s Pop Tarts or Pringles, if you’ve never talked about those products before, your page has nothing to do with it, [then] it feels very inauthentic. So, if you’re a content creator and you’re also an athlete and you talk about training, then you talk about your family, you talk about your lifestyle, maybe you even talk about, like, skincare, you know, because you’re an athlete, you’re sweating, so how do you clean out your pores, I would 100% trust you to tell me what food to put in my body, what things to put on my skin, how to train for acceleration or how to train for explosion. Because those are the things that you have demonstrated expertise in.

“So I definitely think athletes should have some sort of niche to them. But then also, too, you’re a full-time athlete. You are literally spending all your time training or actually participating in a sport. You have limited time outside of that, especially as a college athlete, so pick and choose your battles, pick and choose your free time. And if you’re just making really general content, you’re going to eat up all that free time.”

With experience on all sides of the equation, Maeng understands the perspective and goals of brands and creators alike. When it comes to marketing and creators, brands think about audiences. Whom you can reach will largely dictate the brands and products/services for which you’re an appealing partner. For creators and athletes alike to make themselves attractive to brands, they have to consider why brands work with creators in the first place, and what goes into their decision-making, as Maeng explained.

“When a brand does marketing and uses some sort of talent to market, it’s because that talent can speak to the ideal customer that the brand has,” said Maeng, who today is a fractional COO and CMO, in addition to her work as an investor and adviser. “So like, if I’m Old Navy and I’m launching a new jeans campaign, I’m not going to talk to someone that is probably the same person that State Farm is using to talk about an insurance product. Why? Because the jeans might be for Gen Z people who are going to be under the age of 26, and State Farm Insurance, etc., you’re on your parents’ insurance until you’re 26, so you’re not going to be buying the same product that you would at 26 with the jeans. So it’s creators and talent who have that same ideal audience as the brand.

“Then lastly, it’s figuring out what brands are really interested in. If you see a brand never having been on TikTok, they are probably not going to immediately choose you to be on their TikTok; like, figure out where they are and meet them on the platforms that they are.”

The ball in the athlete’s court is just as important as the brand’s. It can be tempting to say yes to every paycheck, every deal. But as a creator athlete develops an audience, it’s the trust their audience has in them which makes them an appealing endorser in the first place. As many examples have shown over the years, one false step can inhibit the perception of dependability and integrity. This is another layer of counsel that NIL-focused athletes need as they figure out this space.

“At the end of the day, don’t tie yourself to products that aren’t quality, right?” said Maeng, who was an official TikTok partner as the platform ramped up its creator strategy. “Like, you don’t want to turn into these athletes that got caught up in the crypto scandals or any of the other scandals out there because they didn’t do their due diligence, because they thought this would be easy money. They didn’t look into who owns the company or what products were in the product or all those sorts of things…

“When I become an advisor, I put my name, image, and likeness on that company, and my belief in them and my expertise go with them, and my credibility goes with them. So I think everyone has to do their due diligence and really make a very serious, forward-thinking decision if they would like to tie themselves to that.”

There is no shortage of suits getting into athletes’ ears, preying on their untapped potential and relative naivete, to sign them up as a client. And sometimes, agents are a great value-add, but the notion that every athlete seeking to monetize their NIL needs an agent is misleading, Maeng told me. She explained the key considerations in what an athlete needs and when an agent does and does not make sense to bring into the fold, and the potential risks to watch out for.

“In my opinion, if you have your own platform and if you have opportunities in brand deals, you don’t need an agent, you just need a lawyer, and maybe a publicist, someone that can help get your SEO out there, can help get you in front of good opportunities,” said Maeng, who also noted that brand deals don’t happen willy-nilly, but are more often part of brand campaigns planned months in advance. “But an agent should only be used if their opportunities and the things that they have for you outweigh what you currently have. Because at the end of the day, agents make a commission, so they really only get paid on what they bring in or what they work on. And it might get to the point where one agent has like 30 athletes, and he doesn’t have time to work on the bottom 20, he’s only working on the top ten, and you’re going to get upset, you’re going to get unmotivated, all those things, because you realize someone doesn’t care about you or your business as much as you do.”

All of these factors discussed in the preceding paragraphs illuminate the main point: student-athletes, college administrators, university leaders — all this stuff is new to them. The responsibilities for overseeing and preparing athletes for NIL deals are not something to be added to an existing role in the department, nor is an added hire from within the sports world. College programs need someone who has done the thing, who has worked with brands, managed creators (and/or were or are creators themselves), who knows all the things those aforementioned parties don’t.

Maeng and others like her have spent time at schools, working with student-athletes and school administration. She’s seen the gaps to fill, and she spoke with conviction, enumerating the must-haves for these programs to set up their student-athletes for success.

“I think, number one, there are too many agents in the space and not everybody needs an agent, honestly. But I think there are people like myself, people like Sam Green, and people in other companies like Advance, at Greenfly, who are experts in what they educate about.

“Schools should bring in people who can not just speak from experience and speak on education, but I think schools need to actually go a step further and develop curriculum for their athletes about what is a personal brand, how to build it up, how to put that voice into action on social media, then how to make an LLC, how much money that you have to put away for taxes, how to file taxes, how to find a good manager and interview them and figure out if they’re a good fit, how to talk to brands, how to negotiate, how to even turn that into a bigger opportunity. All the things that go along with NIL, I think, need to be taught in some sort of classroom environment.”

This NIL era is new for everyone, not just the student-athletes at the center of it. The systems are being built by the day, the rules are constantly evolving, and many of the administrators and leaders are learning as they go. There is no precedent for programs to follow to adapt to the new normal, but, Maeng reminds us, it’s okay to recognize that there’s a lot you don’t know. The creator economy has been around for years, so while a lot of this is new (and nuanced, to be fair) for college athletics, there are those far more experienced and informed that schools can and should lean on and learn from. Maeng offered her perspective, having worked with schools, and what she’s seeing in the industry.

“I think anyone that has brought in a good platform or a good partner, whatever it is, is taking those first steps; it’s really important,” she said. “Just even admitting they don’t know everything, because, you know, you don’t know everything. I don’t know everything. I don’t even call myself an expert. So I think people that are actively making steps to make this easier on athletes, to make the experience something that they can actually leverage and learn from, I think they’re doing a great job.

“They have to just keep trying to help the athletes and keep trying to be better in the space.”

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL MAENG

READ THE SNIPPETS

Athlete Social Media, College, Social Media ROI, Sponsorships

Student-Athletes as Influencers: A View from Learfield on How NIL Is Reshaping College Sports Marketing

The onset of NIL has already upended the college athletics world and it’s about to do so again.

With the anticipated official approval of the House Settlement on April 7, the ability for schools, the student-athletes, and corporate sponsors to comingle will expand even further, presenting unprecedented opportunity for a new, more rewarding (in more ways than one) student-athlete experience.

For college sports marketing powerhouse Learfield, their conversations with partners are evolving with the onset of ‘student-athlete influencer marketing,’ creating even better activations and enriching the experience for student-athletes. The interest in creators and influencers continues to grow in and out of sports, marked by the universal truth that people connect with people more than brands (or mascots).

“NIL, in a good way, has really opened things up for the storytelling and created an opportunity for my team to think about when we go into a pitch with a brand or another platform or even an athletic director — putting athletes at the center of that storytelling,” said Grant Jones, Senior Vice President and Head of Content for Learfield. “Which in the content world is way more interesting than us pitching a bunch of concepts around — I mean, I love mascots — [concepts] around a bunch of mascots or, you know, a facilities tour. We’ve done a lot of facilities tours. We had to do a bunch of content that really a lot of times didn’t feature or didn’t focus on student-athletes.

“Now that we can pay the athletes to be in this content when the brands are involved in a big way, it opens up storytelling in a big way. So in the last year, even more so, our content is now storytelling with athletes at the center of it.”

As Learfield has kept up with the opportunities that the changing regulations present, schools have been busy finding ways to funnel more money to student-athletes in various ways leading up to the commencement of revenue sharing expected to start with the House Settlement approval. NIL Collectives sprung up around the country along with dubious dealmaking — but in the new world, there will be more ‘true’ NIL, where companies like Learfield, as Jones noted above, can work with sponsors and schools to include student-athletes in sponsor deals.

Every decade or so of college athletics seems to usher in a new sort of ‘arms race,’ marked in recent years by ballooning staffs and increasingly flashy facilities. The next, as Learfield sees it playing out, will be legit NIL opportunities, that allow student-athletes to earn more money on top of the House Settlement revenue sharing (capped at $20.5 million overall).

“It’ll be on top of the student-athlete compensation revenue share piece. So I do think you’re going to see an arms race develop, a new arms race, developing, which was traditionally in coaches salaries and facilities, transition into authentic NIL dealmaking for student-athletes at the universities prioritized. And they’re going to be leaning on us to be a solution for that,” said Solly Fulp, Executive Director for NIL Growth and Development at Learfield, who noted the unique role Learfield can play with their scale of brand and university partners.

“If you think about it, we have the intellectual property rights, so we’re the ones that can connect brand partners with school IP in these campaigns. We’re the only ones that can do that if we’re representing the university. We have over 12,000 brand partners that we’re contracted with both locally and nationally. We have the people power on the ground to activate these campaigns, which is critical when you’re dealing with 18-to-24-year-olds and making sure that this goes well for the brand partner and the student-athlete and it’s good for their experience.”

Arms races in college athletics ultimately come down to fielding the best teams that can attract fans and media and engagement, win championships and drive all the accompanying revenue streams. Jones, who leads Learfield’s content division, noted that while having sponsored content in their social feeds was once met with mild resistance from college athletics staff, brand presence in the feeds is a welcomed addition.

“[It’s pivoted now where a lot of schools want more brands with athletes on their content because it’s great for recruiting,” said Jones. “That is a huge [change]. It’s just funny how much things have changed just in that simple part of the business because of NIL, not only what it means to revenue generation, but to recruiting.

“If you can prove as a school that you’re bringing in, even if it’s a local content deal, that is a positive thing as recruits are scrolling on Instagram.”

Student-athletes will no doubt be enticed by the opportunities to engage in real NIL while they compete in their sport and work toward a degree (in theory at least). There’s a quiet part some are saying out loud, though, because NIL — real NIL (i.e. not paper bags full of cash) takes time. And that’s on top of a demanding schedule of classes and classwork — education is still an essential part of the student-athlete experience for 99% of the — along with practices, travel, and games. So while it’s exciting to envision endless deals and content, Learfield recognizes the best outcomes will try to balance time demands and to lean more in to deals that make sense organically for the student-athletes.

“They have 168 hours in a week,” said Fulp, a former college athlete himself before getting into the business of college sports. “They already don’t have enough time for commercial dealmaking with their athletic and their academic endeavors, so I think we’re getting really strategic on when we engage the student-athletes, when we capture content, when we bring opportunities to the table to make sure that they can be student-athletes, and working with the schools on that.

Fulp continued: “I think we’re getting much better at that, and what campaigns work, and the storytelling behind it, that is really resonating with the corporate partners, and I think as we get to know our student-athletes outside their sport and major — what their likes and interests are and what they represent in values when they take their jersey off…Once we discover [that] and we’re getting better at discovering their likes and interests, we can pair them up with the right brands. And when you do that, it’s like next-level engagement. You can see it in the campaigns and the storytelling content that Grant and his team bring to the table.”

Even the most thoughtful, spot-on partnerships and deals still have to be activated, and these days that often means content — videos or photos or both, often meant for social and digital media. Content is the name of the game for the creator economy, but student-athletes aren’t professional creators. The value of the name, image, and likeness for the vast majority of student-athletes isn’t from the content they produce, but their influence.

While it’s easy to assume that all of Gen Z are native creators, having grown up in a rich content ecosystem with all the hardware and software in their pocket, Jones and the Learfield team appreciate that it’s not that easy. It can be intimidating to produce content for which a brand is paying, so Learfield is there to ensure everything goes smoothly and to put both sides at ease.

“There are not too many athletes that are fully comfortable, and this is professional [athletes] too, that are fully comfortable taking brand dollars, taking a brand brief, creating something on their own with their cell phone and putting it back to a brand, especially if it’s a national brand, and thinking that they’re good to go,” said Learfield’s content lead Jones. “The idea of creating something on their own is, I think, difficult…

Jones continued: “That might mean they’re setting up an entire production and there’s a couple of cameras and the athlete comes in and does something. It might mean they go over to the practice facility with a cell phone and just shoot something with the athlete real quick and they’re not even taking the footage into a post-production software.

“We are really making sure that the athletes are in a position to succeed, the brand is happy with what they get back and that there’s, obviously, the recognizable intellectual property of the school involved…”

While Learfield is there to lend a helping hand, the sheer volume of deals and number of student-athlete influencers means the organization has to be smart about where they allocate resources. It also means they have massive potential to put together far-reaching, national deals that are lucrative for schools and student-athletes, and effective for brand partners.

“When NIL was first starting…[and] there’s a local pizza shop that wants to give five athletes $1,000 each to create some content, does Learfield get involved in that? Is that a thing that we want to play with?” Jones posed rhetorically. “We quickly learned that the work it takes to do that $5,000 deal on the content and student-athlete and influencer side might not be that much less work than the $500,000 deal from the hospital down the street from the pizza shop.

“So our business is about creating the most value for our brand partners, combining those three things — media assets, IP from the school marks and logos and the student athletes’ NIL. Then how that manifests to bigger deals, like the national deals that I mentioned is, that’s where content is a huge driver of that.”

The ‘content’ portion of the revenue pie for Learfield and its partners continues to grow — while making the overall pie even bigger. Driven by the ever-insatiable appetite from fans for content featuring their favorite teams and student-athletes, Learfield recognizes the underlying paradigm of their business is evolving — and that it presents a heck of an opportunity. Fulp spoke enthusiastically about the increase in content demand, flanked by the opportunity to tell richer student-athletes’ stories with their involvement, and what it means for the present and future of the business.

“We’ve been an event-driven business. We’ve been selling football packages and basketball packages, and it’s been really wrapped around the actual athletic event,” explained Fulp. “This opens up the year-round engagement with the student athletes that these university communities want, so the storytelling and the connections can happen in the off-season.

“And what we’re realizing and appreciating is that these university communities can’t get enough of the content with the student athletes associated with it. They want to consume it, and they’re consuming it. So when you connect it with the right brand partners, it is magic. It’s exciting.”

It all IS exciting. For years, many descried the state of the industry, with student-athletes getting remuneration for all their efforts in the form of scholarships only, while millions of dollars flowed from their labor and NIL. The new era is exciting, but it’s about more than just money exchanging hands. The best outcomes for, again, ‘real’ NIL transcends a paycheck; student-athletes are getting valuable experience that’ll serve them well beyond their athletic careers. They’ll make money, but also learn about business, form invaluable relationships, and get more out of their time in collegiate athletics than ever before. Fulp reflected on the dynamic landscape, speaking forcefully about the need to keep the student-athlete at the center of the conversation going forward. Amidst all the change, the money, and the opportunities, it all goes back to what’s best for the student-athlete.

“The challenge now is we’ve got to reconstruct some of the stuff, incorporate NIL the right way, and prepare these young adults to go out and do really awesome things outside their sport,” said Fulp. “And I think we have the opportunity to do that. I think it’s going to be really additive to the university and align with the university’s mission, values, and purpose.

“But university leaders, when they’re thinking about conference realignment and they’re thinking about the $20.5 million distribution to these student athletes and some really big things, making sure that at the end of the day, when these kids leave these universities, they feel like they’ve gotten just as much or more from the university that they gave.”

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH LEARFIELD’S SOLLY FULP AND GRANT JONES

READ THE SNIPPETS

Athlete Social Media, Content Strategy, Digital, General Sports Business, Sports Media, Streaming and Video

Beyond the Playbook: Bold, Trend-Driven Considerations for Sports Business in 2025

There are a myriad of reasons that make social media in sports unique.

The schedule and routine nature of sports can create predictability — but well-laid plans can also go up in smoke in an instant due to sports’ inherent unpredictability. Customers are fanatical about your brand (‘fans’) but that emotion can also turn negative by factors outside your control. Sports are perhaps one of the last (potentially) monocultures left — sports teams and leagues, and the fans, can relate to nearly every rabbit hole and trend.

All this to say that while leaders in sport may be able to count on a certain routine part of their jobs, there’s a whole lot more nobody can see coming. The exciting uncertainty gets compounded for social and digital media, where just when you think the pace of change is slowing, new opportunities, features, and platforms arise; all the while the half-life of trends and fads is shorter than ever. And while teams and leagues remain influential brands and retain massive platforms, they’ll find their fans gravitating more and more to creators and individual athletes.

So as the calendar turns from 2024 to 2025, it’s time for our annual column on what to have in mind for the year to come. It’s a part behavioral analysis and part reading the tea leaves of where the platforms are going. We can rest assured that certain principles of fandom and human psychology remain the same, while also embracing the untapped potential of what may lie ahead.

Re-Imagining In-Game Social Strategies

There’s no doubt Twitter isn’t what it once was. The platform still has a sizable, engaged sports audience, to be sure, but its ebbing numbers and diminishing value cannot be denied.

Sports teams and leagues will not abandon Twitter in 2025, but should it remain a top priority during games, with one or more team staff dedicated to filling the feed?

Combined with the dilution of Twitter is the increased homogeneity in in-game coverage. It’s game highlights (sometimes with unique angles), a stream of templated graphics and GIFs, and attempts at clever copy—often culminating in a ‘savage’ post after a win.

Could we see teams start to lean into the formulaic nature of in-game tweeting, let a combination of AI and semi-automated processes feed the feed with clips and graphics, leaving manpower to focus on more original and higher-value content? What is the role of a social media manager if they’re not hovering over the keys for the whole game?

Supported by a consistent feed of clips, could the social media team focus on curating the best fan and journalist content? Will there be a focus to push fans into owned and operated channels for a superior in-game experience (and could fans be more willing to go as more abandon Twitter and find alternatives like Bluesky and Threads to be lacking)? Or should social media managers treat their role more like hosts, checking in from the game like your creator friend on site at the event?

I can’t imagine going anywhere but Twitter when a big game is on, but substantive change will eventually come and 2025 may be the start.

The Evolving Social Media Role: Community Management vs. Content Creation and Strategy

For years, and largely still today, ‘social media manager’ was a catch-all term. It’s actually a bit of a joke that the job title can encompass a plethora of responsibilities like content creation, graphic design, video production, paid social, project management, analytics, and this list could go on. Community management was just kind of a given and still is, at least in the sports world.

But in the year ahead could we see an appreciation for the role of community management, even a separate dedicated role that accounts for the importance and full-time nature of such a responsibility? Community is becoming increasingly important as social platforms fragment, and engagement shifts toward interactions between fans and friends rather than big brands or scaled broadcast feeds of traditional social. Community management is a specialized role — discovering, developing, participating, listening, moderating, and monitoring.

Communities exist everywhere, which require a deep understanding of the language, culture, interests, memes, influencers, and angles. How many different communities thrive on TikTok? How many different places could a team or league be a central or tangential part of conversation and engagement? In 2025, let’s give community the attention and importance it deserves. Which relates to the next topic…

Micro Communities 

The emergence of micro communities is not new, it has been happening across industries for years, but really picked up in 2024 and expect to continue growing in the year to come. Reddit has seen substantial engagement growth—highlighted by recent PR efforts focused on sports—and community-based strategies are becoming more prevalent across platforms and industries. With some exceptions, social media is becoming less, well, ‘social,’ with algorithms that favor engagement, regardless of who it’s from, and the interest graph leading the way.

Look at the way the platforms are evolving to serve this need, too. TikTok touts its micro communities, whether BookTok or RushTok or the like, Facebook Groups are keeping big blue relevant for younger users, and Instagram is encouraging its biggest brands to carve their audiences with broadcast channels.

What could micro community strategy look like for sports organizations? Thinking about fan cohorts became common several years ago, largely driven by socioeconomic, demographic, and avidity measures. And every year sees plenty of theme nights and promotions targeted to specific, sometimes very small communities. But what can this look like on digital and social media? How can teams and leagues seek out and serve (or learn from) existing micro communities, or perhaps even cultivate their own? As users (and fans) seek more authentic connections and genuine conversations, micro communities will continue to grow.

Even More Niche Content

This could’ve been addressed in the previous section, but there’s value in considering niche content, as well. Social media pros once lamented (and some still do) that organically reaching one’s followers was a thing of the past. But consider the possibilities that have opened up in the last few years, as more social media users stick on the For You feed over the Following alternative. There is so much good (and bad) content, it’s easier to let an algorithm surface the best content as it gets to know us better than we know ourselves.

So while your followers may not all see your content, the users that are likely to enjoy the content you put out will see it (if it’s good). Brands and teams can unleash their content and let the algorithm show it to the right audience (while avoiding the the wrong one). Instagram may even find that a certain tile in a carousel post is more attractive to a certain audience.

Embrace it and don’t be afraid to try content that’s specifically not meant to appeal to the masses, but will be welcomed (and engaged with) by an intended audience. The goal of every post and piece of content isn’t to reach millions—that’s the wrong way to think about it. Embrace the increasingly savvy algorithms and lean into niches that may make no sense to certain segments of your fans (and even yourself) but will be epic for others.

Platforms to Enhance Small Group Chats and Communities

Where does most of the sports dialogue take place? Actual back-and-forth conversations, with darn near 100% open and read rate? Dark social channels like DMs, group chats, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It’s old news now that Instagram acknowledged there’s a heck of a lot of engagement and sharing happening in the direct messages. WhatsApp continues to grow, particularly in the US, and even Snap remains strong among Gen Z for chatting.

Can teams and leagues create a platform so good that it can take those intimate direct communications away from texts and DMs to an owned platform? It’s tough to compete with your device’s built-in messenger or the ubiquity of WhatsApp, the convenience of IG, the fun and habit of Snap — but what could sports organizations try in order to capture all this valuable engagement and these users?

Leagues may provide a feed of clips from games to insert into a chat with one frictionless click. Perhaps fans can access photos and screenshots along with a simple meme-making tool. Or fans could earn points to redeem for merch simply by sending messages to each other during a game. Teams could even provide trained LLMs via chatbots who could discuss the game (with personalities and dispositions to choose from) and answer questions. Maybe there’s no solution—these platforms are too sticky—but as conversations keep becoming less public and sports dialogue continues on dark channels, the opportunity persists.

The Full Embrace of Creators

Sports leagues and teams have been working in some capacity with creators for years now. An increasing number even have job titles that include, and some are centered around, influencer/creator marketing or relations. But if the state of influencer x sports integration were measured on a scale of 1-10, what would ’10’ look like?

While not tens, the industry saw some 7’s or 8’s in the last few years. NBC Olympics and the IOC gave a select group of creators access to events (though with limitations on the content they could capture). The NFL gives some creators access to gameday clips and archival footage, while the NBA has a similar initiative that expanded this season.

In 2025, more teams, leagues, and media partners could not only welcome creators but also collaborate with them even further. Give them access to content AND have them co-create content (for organic and paid). Let them remix highlights or host their own highlights recap show during the week. Invite them to make shows or skits for their own channels at team practices and games. Invite more creators to put on their own ‘ManningCasts’ — as more games shift away from the cable bundle, providing an abundance of alternate streams becomes more feasible and viable. help them activate their communities or fans at games. (JohnWallStreet wrote about this earlier this year)

There’s a greater (and lucrative) opportunity to figure out what a partnership with sports and creators should look like in its most optimized state. Hopefully, we’ll see some swings in the year to come.

(Here’s a solid SBJ article discussing several leagues’ creator initiatives)

Athlete-led Multi-Channel Networks and Content Franchises

By the time you’re done reading this, another athlete will have started a podcast. Athletes (and their management teams) are increasingly realizing the relative ease and significant benefits going on the mic for an hour a week, give or take, can provide them. It’s a platform to build their brand, of course, and control their narrative. It’s an asset on which to activate partners or promote their own causes and businesses. And it’s a lightweight way to seed an engaging presence on YouTube, in particular, as well as TikTok (and Instagram).

Athletes entering the pro ranks now are even more invested, with some colleges even providing studios and training for their student-athletes. In the year ahead, the teams and leagues will begin to realize the opportunity in front of them — and the urgency.

We’ll see more teams provide studios and equipment for their players to produce podcasts. True collaboration could take place, with teams building something akin to a multi-channel network, activating diverse athletes with their unique interests. One athlete might focus on mental health, another on spirituality and religion, a third on interviewing comedians and actors, and yet another on re-watching famous games. The possibilities are endless and can align with players’ interests. Packaged together (or not), these could form a significant platform to attract new partners or extend existing ones. Some athletes are so big they’d rather do their own thing or work with a platform like Wave or Blue Wire. But plenty would jump at the chance to get this kind of access and audience (and revenue sharing) a team could provide.

With more teams closely tied, if not owning, their RSNs or DTC solution for games, such content can fill those coffers with new programming, in addition to the feeds of YouTube and TikTok. Which leads to…

The Team (or RSN) App as the AVOD or SVOD for Fans

While regional sports networks have survived longer than many expected, some teams are taking things over or working closely with a partner, and many teams are prioritizing first-party relationships with fans, often through apps. The productions that teams create rival anything fans will see on Netflix, Max, or Peacock. The training camp all-access content and game recap mini-movies are incredible. More colleges are building robust content-based DTC apps, with livestreams of coaches shows and extensive catalogs of content.

Many teams have impressive serialized series (and podcasts) on YouTube (and even TikTok) playlists, some are sitting on decades worth of content newly digitized (or some still sitting on old VHS tapes and DVDs). All of them boast impressive production teams. In the year to come, teams and leagues will envision their fans flipping to their app the same way they would Netflix to watch on-demand content. Not just for an hour a week, but consistently—even during the offseason.

The bigger opportunity may even be in licensing proven content and creators. Look at how ESPN licensed distribution rights to the Pat McAfee show as an example. Now, sports teams and leagues won’t lay out tens of millions of dollars like ESPN did for McAfee, but what’s to stop them from acquiring emerging talents and properties. Or perhaps they could go the route of Colin Cowherd’s The Volume or Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network and create mini media empires that can benefit from their distribution and advertiser relations.

Perhaps there will even be membership tiers, similar to those offered by major players, with options for ads or ad-free viewing/listening. It’s exciting to imagine, which coincides with…

+ Experiences for Fans

Over a decade ago, I learned that sports teams in Australia didn’t have season ticket holders—they had ‘members.’ Being a member was about more than having tickets to games, it was an identity and a connection to the team. Many American teams started calling their season ticket holders ‘members,’ but it was mostly an exercise in nomenclature. When tickets to games became moot during the worst days of the pandemic, there was more experimentation with what paid ‘memberships’ could mean, but nothing really took off beyond a few teams launching more inspired loyalty programs.

The + is now ubiquitous across consumer products and services, as are subscriptions in general. However, beyond ticket subscriptions (like season tickets or mini plans), there hasn’t been much of a membership model in sports. There is NFL+, which offers access to audio streams and archives and college athletics (including NIL collectives and booster clubs) are innovating in the space, but what could + programs look like for sports, in much the same way Amazon Prime feels for its millions of members?

In the coming year, teams and leagues around the world can continue to imagine memberships — premium memberships — for fans local and remote. There is more data being collected than ever, which can enable personalized benefits and partner co-promotions. Experiences are more valued, and more diverse and amenable to unbundling, whether in-person (separate entries) or remote (like early access to limited merch drops). As the previous section noted, too, with teams able to build ever-increasing catalogs of content, a + experience could also mean something akin to Prime Video — content…

Get Bold with Generative AI

It’s been over two years since ChatGPT launched to the public, and generative AI continues to improve (insert a cynical take about the rate of acceleration slowing). The arms race keeps going and tools like NotebookLM reset the goalposts on what can be created from source materials. And you know who’s sitting on decades’ worth of brand content? Yep, sports teams and leagues, who also have fans with insatiable appetites for content about their team, with nostalgia often irresistible.

Even as questions persist about how consumers will tolerate AI-generated content, these factors point to opportunity. Could the archives of thousands of interviews turn into binge-worthy podcasts and documentary-dramatizations or page-turning oral histories? Or how could terabytes of game notes and stats be put into action through diverse generative AI packages, from compelling content to endless games and trivia?

We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of generative AI, in all its multimodal forms. There’s a treasure trove of latent content (and sponsorable assets) just waiting to be mined for fans.

Leaning into Novelty and Micro Culture for Games and Live Events

For decades, ‘gimmicks’ were seen as beneath pro sports, novelty was the domain of minor league sports. Major pro sports are beginning to embrace fun, recognizing the value in ephemeral and sometimes esoteric online trends and cultures as lucrative opportunities.

There have been monoculture themes present in pro sports for years — Star Wars Nights are omnipresent across major and minor (and college) sports. But culture is now more fragmented and trends come and go quickly; few viral moments or movements resonate with the majority of fans in a packed stadium or arena.

In the year ahead, teams will embrace the countless microtrends and communities that form and proliferate across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. They’ll capitalize on trends within niches as much as, if not more than, the well-worn monocultural motifs. How can teams make every game an event and inspire FOMO for some cohort[s] of fans who want to be there for it? Gone are the years of forced formality and pompous self-importance — there will be more fun ahead in the future.

Strategy Around Condensed Games

Younger generations don’t watch full games. Some may say that narrative has become so widespread that it’s become overhyped — but it’s largely true. This trend coincides with the continued rise of condensed games. Go on the NBA YouTube page, for example, and you’ll find a playlist of ‘full game highlights’—10-minute videos that summarize the game and showcase key plays, often garnering hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. So while the dream of getting Gen Z and Gen Alpha to sit in front of a TV and give their mostly undivided attention for 2-3 hours seems naive, getting them to watch condensed games feels more plausible.

In the year to come, leagues and teams can operationalize condensed games, experimenting with formats and activations, and building them into valuable assets rather than YouTube afterthoughts. They could license condensed games to creators, allowing them to relive and recap games (while sharing in the revenue). Sponsors could help deliver condensed games to the masses, allowing fans and wannabe creators to remix and put their own spin on highlights and game stories. Broadcasters and leagues can experiment with unique angles and POVs for condensed games. For instance, iso-cams have already been part of the NBA on TNT’s strategy, as well as the ‘Caitlin Clark’ cam during her last season at Iowa.

There’s an interesting future to consider for condensed games, but even while the future remains uncertain for full games, nothing can truly replace live content…

More Live

2025 will mark ten years since Live entered the social media picture, when Meerkat and Periscope launched and allowed anyone anywhere with a mobile device and a decent connection to go live to the world. In my recent interview with World Wide Wob (Rob Perez), he remarked about the continued value of live, content where anything could happen and anything could go unexpectedly go wrong. Even mundane content becomes more compelling when it’s live. Many prognosticators assert that 2025 will be the year live shopping takes off in the US, with platforms like TikTok reimagining QVC for younger generations.

In the year ahead, sports teams and leagues will continue to innovate and try new things with live (and that includes games!). As more fans get on DTC and streaming apps to find their team’s content, that’ll compound the already ever-present platforms like YouTube to find fans who will tune in to see it live. For games, streaming parts of games live will be a key tactic to drive sign-ups and perhaps even open the opportunity for PPV or micro-transactions to watch an exciting finish (the NBA talked about this years ago, Buzzer had a strong go at it, too). But there’s even more.

There are plenty of narratives about the oncoming onslaught of AI slop filling feeds today and moving forward. But you can ‘t AI-ize ‘live.’ Stretching and warming up before practice is boring and monotonous — but what if it’s live? (I’d watch a livestream of an NHL team playing sewer ball before a game!) The dance team preparing a routine can be great live content. Who wouldn’t watch a live stream of a hockey equipment manager sharpening skates or an NFL clubhouse attendant setting up players’ lockers. Or how about a livestream of a producer editing a hype video?

We’re starting to see more games-based content, so perhaps there’s a future of livestreams featuring players competing in beer pong (with water — or some sponsors’ sports drink). Live trivia games with fans or players would fit in that mold, too. An always-on livestream of a stadium’s VIP entrance or an arena’s transformation from hockey to basketball could be content gold (time lapses are cool, but they’re not live!). And, yes, the drops culture has already come to sports, so live reveals of exclusive merch and collectibles would seem to work, too. (Including ‘breaks’ performed by a player/alum/mascot/broadcasters).

Short-form, long-form; Stories and Feed — live is one format that’ll always offer unique value and the creativity, originality, innovation, and value creation is just getting started.

Retail Media and Commerce-Driven Sponsorships

Over the last couple of years, it seems every major corporation with a sizable database of users, detailed information about them, and a steady flow of traffic has created retail media networks where advertisers can bid for inventory. Sports has forever been an industry built on brand partnerships, with some performance-driven marketing baked in (e.g., ‘the team won, so get a discounted pizza’). And while there is a step back to brand marketing, after an overcorrection, partnerships and advertising with trackable, countable results are still gaining priority.

Even the biggest leagues or college conferences may not be able to, nor does it make sense to, support actual retail networks. But this industry trend could creep its way into the sports world as organizations continue to collect more first-party data, have increasingly robust user profiles, and establish more connected touchpoints with fans. For the most part, teams and leagues have operationalized fan data to sell them more of the stuff they produce or license themselves — tickets, merchandise, collectibles, etc. — but how could they start to more effectively segment their fans so that the offers and products, and even the advertisers, are the right ones for each fan and in each context. And as the data infrastructure continues to mature, there could be valuable, increasingly smarter and high-converting ads (for b2c and even b2b businesses).

I’m not smart or informed enough to know how quickly or whether such a vision could materialize, but sports apps—especially those supported by content and live games—will likely remain among the few apps where users spend significant time, creating a world of opportunities.

Novelty Merch Drops and Collectibles: Beyond Game Giveaways

2024 was the year of the novelty popcorn bucket. Movie theaters capitalized on the surprisingly intense fan interest to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. The Carolina Hurricanes introduced a Zamboni popcorn bucket, while the Detroit Red Wings have gone viral the last couple of years around Thanksgiving for their Zamboni gravy boats (and even had a design contest for this year’s version).

Novelty items are not new to sports. Heck, some teams even produce giveaways teaser videos with the same excitement as schedule release videos (see this example from the San Diego Padres). But sponsored giveaways largely exist to a) Activate sponsorships (duh) and b) Boost attendance — you have to go to the game to get that exclusive bobblehead! But so many teams boast so many fans who cannot (or will not) go to games, they either too far away, can’t afford to go to many games or mainly express their fandom digitally. The importance of the remote fan grew during the pandemic, when in-person attendance was impossible.

So why are these sponsored giveaway items still positioned mostly as attendance boosters? Combine the novelty, the ‘drops’ culture, the surge of collectibles in recent years, the rise of live and creator-driven shopping — and creative, original novelty merch drops could be a big boon for teams, leagues, and their partners. Fwiw, we have seen more teams in recent years do apparel collabs, which seem to be successful. But take that to the nth degree with tchotchkes and collectibles that fans around the world can’t resist.

There could be millions in revenue on the table, whether through direct sales or through sponsor-driven models where fans ‘pay’ by purchasing a sponsor’s product, providing contact information, or completing a branded game—earning them these items shipped directly to their door. The gate still matters, ticket sales are still a very meaningful revenue stream — but instead of subsidizing gravy boats for 20,000 fans (or up to 60-70-80,000 fans), open up these valuable engagement (and earned media/display) opportunities to the millions of fans around the globe.

Mini Serialized Episodes

It was about a year ago that noted social media consultant and Link in Bio newsletter author Rachel Karten wrote that we should ‘treat your social video channels like you would a TV show’ (read the full piece here). And if you work in social media, you’ve no doubt come across the viral Mohawk Chevrolet content on TikTok. Meanwhile, in Japan (and China), short dramas, with ‘episodes’ typically lasting 1-3 minutes are becoming increasingly popular (read about it).

So, with all that, how can sports teams and leagues create entertainment for their fans that transcends the typical content related to their games, players, and training, and even the ‘lifestyle’ content becoming more prevalent? Could a team (with or without a team sponsor) bankroll an emerging creator to produce a short-form sitcom or sketch show featuring some storylines or ‘product placement’ involving the team? Could there be a meta (lowercase m) series that imagines days in the life of team staff? Perhaps a few characters find themselves in a rom-com that plays at or around games? Teams don’t have to collaborate with creators; they could instead build capabilities in-house or work with agencies and freelancers.

I’m no creator or creative producer, but the point is that even the biggest fans are still consuming a lot of media that is not content produced by their favorite teams (or media talking about the teams), a lot of pure entertainment, much of which is created by TikTokers and YouTubers. In the coming year, teams and leagues could leverage their expertise, channels, brand affinity, and credibility to engage fans in creative, original ways that transcend their sport.

All these topics are not meant to be predictions; the world changes far too rapidly to prognosticate—though plenty of prediction columns try each year. But the only certainty is change, innovation, and advancement. All we can do is watch user behavior change, see how the world around us evolves, and take calculated risks and audacious shots. The only failure is standing pat and leaning into only what works today. Eschew the comfort and complacency of the status quo and don’t be afraid to do what hasn’t yet been done. The only way to realize an exciting future is to create it ourselves.

Athlete Social Media

Winning Off the Field: The Athlete’s Guide to Building a Powerful Personal Brand

Athletes have an unfair advantage in the creator economy. It’s always been that way. That’s why the opportunity for athletes to capitalize on their leg up by adopting even the most minimal tactics of full-time creators is so vast. The athletes are starting to understand that advantage, with many surpassing the legacy media outlets and building brands that’ll last (and continue to grow) after their competitive career ends.

Your talent is making you the minimal viable product. Because of your talent, because of the fact that you’re a professional athlete,” veteran sports marketer and The Athlete Brand author Thomas van Schaik told me in a recent interview. “What we see more and more is that athletes are starting to understand how this industry works. Content creation, brand building, and distribution have commoditized. Everybody can do it. And now they’re learning how to actually be better storytellers, how to be better entrepreneurs, how to be better content creators, and they are beating the established media outlets and they are beating the rights holders at this game already in large numbers.”

Thomas van Scahik has spent decades in sports business, from helping to grow challenger sports and athletes at NFL Europe and the Dutch Olympic and Paralympic Committee to working with superstars at adidas — and he’s seen the convergence of athlete social media with the dominance of creator platforms. But it’s not as easy as just flipping on the figurative lights. If that were the case, the viability of athletes’ holistic platforms would be an exact match with their place on the league depth chart. Then explain Pat McAfee. Explain Livvy Dunne. Explain JuJu Smith-Schuster.

As creators proliferate across platforms and monoculture diminishes, the key for athletes is to not try to beat every creator and media outlet or even to beat every athlete creator. That’s not the point. Athletes just have to be the best at being themselves.

“The only thing that’s better than better is different,” said van Schaik, invoking the aphorism put forth by author and speaker Sally Hogshead. “So you need to be distinctive. And once you look at yourself and you say ‘Which elements of me, of my appearance, of the way I play, of how I feel about this game are different from everybody else?’

“Either you are different or you are invisible. Which part of my distinctiveness do I actually enlarge? Which do I intentionally showcase? Which of them do I not want to amplify? But looking at yourself and saying, what is distinctive about me is crucial.”

This intentionality starts by thinking like a brand. There’s a clear distinction between branding and marketing, van Schaik tells me, and that difference is key as athletes build their platforms.

“Branding works only from the inside out,” he said. “Marketing starts with the fan in mind and you adjust the product, you adjust the price, you adjust the design, you adjust the promotion in order to attract the right customer. That’s what marketing does. You change the product to get as many customers as you want. Branding is the other way around. You can’t change who you are on the inside to fit better to the audience that you’re trying to attract.”

Once athletes decide who they are and how they want to portray themselves, the strategic foundation is built. They don’t have to be everything to everybody. Even athletes in niche sports or smaller leagues and programs can achieve the ‘1000 true fans,’ said van Schaik, referencing author and journalist Kevin Kelly’s well-known principle.

“The next question is who would you want your 1000 fans to be?,” van Schaik said. “Who is your ideal fan? Who are you actually creating content for? Where are these people? What is it they love about you? Why are these people your fans? Get to know these people. Because your vibe attracts your tribe. You attract the best and you repel the rest. Once you start creating content, for your most valuable audience, that audience will grow.”

The brand and business picture becomes clearer now. My own eyes light up as van Schaik talks through this logical, easily digestible process of defining a brand, the fans, and then the business. This is the creator business model in action, it’s no different for an athlete. Attract fans intentionally, get to know them, and then figure out how to give something valuable — and monetizable. I’ll let van Schaik take it from here:

“Challenge number one is defining which people am I actually creating content for. The second is actually connecting with them and that’s what digital channels perfectly allow you to do. You can target your ideal customer. You can find them anywhere they are. You can go to the channels where they already are and you can attract them there, making a digital connection with them.

“The third step is once you get to know them and once you’re connected with them, now you can actually ask and interact with them — what would be the products and services that they would love to buy from you? You already have the know, like and trust factor. You know them better than anybody else. They are already digitally connected. The challenge with AI is not product creation. The biggest challenge is distribution. And within this niche authority, this niche fame that you have already built with your community, now you are the authority. You are the authority on yourself, right?

“What is it that these fans would love to buy from you? Is it a T-shirt? Is it a book? Is it a clinic? Is it a stream? Is it an NFT? What is it? Once you get to know your true fans, really, you can offer the value that they are looking for.”

This all makes sense. It’s easy to comprehend and one thing leads to another. But what about the messy middle? Athletes may have a better understanding of who they’re trying to reach and why, what about themselves and their life they want to showcase and why — but a lot of the best-laid strategies can get lost in the tactics. It’s the day-to-day posting that intimidates most athletes. They’re used to having plans laid out for them, how many sets and reps to perform in training, drills dialed down to the minute, and schedules and meal plans just as rigidly set for them.

This is where van Schaik helps break down the intimidating book into approachable chapters and pages. When the big goals are broken down into achievable parts, it feels a heck of a lot more doable.

“I have five building blocks that I recommend every athlete includes”, said van Schaik, citing posts can be broken down into 30% personality, 30% performance 30%, 15% community 15% monetization, and 15%, passion (he elaborates on each of these areas in his book and in our interview). “Of course, all of the percentages are flexible. What I’m advocating is that you actually make a conscious choice about them, that you intentionally decide what your holistic brand profile is actually going to be. And depending on the archetype that you select, those influences might actually change…

“Let’s just say you’re comfortable posting twice a week as an athlete. Now you’re committing to posting twice every week, which means 104 times a year. Now you start applying those percentages to all of your annual posts, and now you’re creating a content plan for 104 posts as opposed to randomly live-casting the fact that you’re eating, you know, a plate of pasta today.

“All of a sudden, you are creating narratives surrounding your passion, surrounding your community, and you know that you’re going to have to post 24 times about your community. All of a sudden, you’re in a different creative challenge.”

The new era of athletes is here. Where they think less about securing the next endorsement deal (those aren’t going anywhere, to be sure — especially because they directly benefit the agents that solicit and manage them), but as the athlete economy becomes bigger than the legacy media platforms that rely on them, empires of all sizes will be built. Every athlete will realize the opportunity they have. This isn’t about Ronaldo and Serena and Messi and the other single-named athletes, but the average pro athlete who can aspire even higher.

This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky dreaming, it’s a real business opportunity that, if it’s thoughtfully planned and executed, will succeed. Athletes just need to formulate that plan and put it into action, van Schaik explained, with fascinating detail.

“The five steps that I recommend every athlete takes is step number one, make a plan. Step number two, optimize your socials, which basically goes back to coming to your plan, establishing a frequency, coming up with a narrative.

Three is build your own digital home base, which is basically a website. You can do there whatever it is that you want, whether that is crowdfunding, whether that is e-commerce, whether that is collecting [user] data — build your digital home base. Number four is predominantly for athletes that enjoy a little bit less visibility of traditional media outlets like a javelin thrower or a gymnast or somebody who’s not [an everyday player] in the NBA, get a newsletter so that out of your followers you can get [them] to subscribers, people that actually follow you.

“The fifth is to think about an annual live in-person or virtual event. Even if you only invite 10 of your hardcore fans or 20 or 25, what is the annual event that you could organize to engage your most passionate audience? Because the idea is that even that event could be a content engine where people actually create content around you or you are capable of creating content. The idea should be that your 1000 true fans should want to be there next year.”

The blueprint for athletes is there. Their stories have already been driving multi-billion dollar businesses and massive attention empires for years. It’s time for them to understand the power they really have. Creators run the media world, athletes can be creators with built-in advantages and the highest ceilings. The athletes have already won, and they’re just getting started.

BONUS INSIGHTS

This interview was so packed with value that I felt compelled to include a couple of other thought-provoking insights from Thomas van Schaik. There’s even more in the full interview!

On how the value of a given athlete is about their ability to attract people and their attention. Competitive greatness is still a key factor, but it’s not the only factor.

van Schaik:

“What we see is that entertainment and sports are more personality-focused rather than performance-focused. That the value lies not in their ability to compete, but in their ability to attract attention…but they’re still being outperformed by individual athletes, and I think that opens up a range of opportunities for people with the willingness and capability to understand and service and facilitate athletes.

“I think not only partners will start doing that, but also the rights holders. Because rights holders without icons will lose the competition for eyeballs. Icons equal eyeballs. The roadmap into fandom for the young sports fans is through the individual athletes, which means that rights holders will have to invest in actually building up these athlete brands because it is the shortest way to attracting a valuable audience”.

A fascinating excerpt discussing ‘multi-player brands’ and ‘open-source branding.’ When your brand is a platform for further activation, development, expression, and community, this is so great.

van Schaik:

“What I will add to this is this idea of multiplayer brands, this open source kind of branding. If we look at Taylor Swift, then the beauty of this is that, you know, an individual can never out-produce in terms of content volume her community, right? That would be impossible for her. Every event that she organizes is a content creation hub. There’s not a person at the Eras Tour that doesn’t make a photograph, that doesn’t make a video, and that doesn’t amplify this event and her brand message to their individual audience. So all of a sudden, everybody in their audience is a creator. And that makes Taylor Swift not only a great content creator, but also a great content director. The environment that she has created enables each of her fans to amplify her message, to amplify her love, to amplify her passion, to amplify her narrative.

The future of brand building is not at your audience, but with your audience. And what we see in sports, but also with athletes, is that they are increasingly looking for opportunities to enable their community to produce this content.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS VAN SCHAIK

READ THE SNIPPETS

CHECK OUT HIS BOOK THE ATHLETE BRAND

Athlete Social Media, College

NIL Through the Eyes of an Athlete: Creating and Receiving Value that Transcends Dollars

For decades, star student-athletes enjoyed an elevated local or even national status. But besides maybe a generous portion in their Chipotle bowl or skipping the line at the club, there wasn’t much (legal) remuneration for being ‘big man on campus.’

And then name-image-likeness regulations were blown wide open and the student-athlete opportunity was potentially more lucrative than ever. If the amateur athletes seized that opportunity, built their brands, and became attractive to individuals and businesses willing to pay for access to their NIL.

But athletes pitching themselves is nothing new. Most college athletes on scholarships were building up and selling a product years before they stepped foot on campus — they were marketing themselves. As future leaders for a program, as strong ambassadors for the school, and as individuals that coaches would want to invest in. A star high school quarterback in the football-mad state of Texas, Chase Griffin, went through that recruiting process, and he recognized that student-athletes, working for college athletic programs that take in millions of dollars, are well-positioned for the new era of NIL activation.

“I’ve always thought athletes were built for NIL for two reasons,” said Griffin, who ended up going to UCLA to join a historic athletics program and institution. “One, we already generate so much revenue and value for the companies and in industries that are set up around collegiate sports. And then two, we’re by nature content creators. Every single person who’s in college right now either produced their own Hudl or had a coach or guardian who created their Hudl of content that they were doing on the field and they had to create their profile and put grades and put good works in there. Every single person who’s gotten to college has been recruited off of a highlight tape off of some type of reel.”

Griffin came into UCLA already having experience doing interviews, representing himself, and even engaging with brands at various events for awards. He was more than ready for the opportunities that the opening of NIL regulations afforded student-athletes like himself. It was those media engagements and self-awareness just as much as anything he could do on the field, though. NIL activities aren’t some inherent part of being a high-level student-athlete, Griffin said, and it’s not something that every athlete needs to or even can do well. It takes work, as any traditional ‘influencer’ or celebrity or creator can attest. And while student-athletes can now legally monetize their NIL, it doesn’t mean it’s automatic riches and deals for every athlete.

“I think not everybody has to participate in NIL. And the ones that do, it’s completely up to them how much time and effort that they put into it,” said Griffin, who has become a leader in the NIL space, particularly among active athletes. “But it is very much getting what you get out of as far as the time commitment. And the thing is, it’s less reliant on sport than people realize. There are folks who are extremely good content creators who are in gymnastics or who are in soccer, or who are in rowing that are getting deals because they know how to create a follower base and create content that is engagement-worthy, and brands recognize that.”

All of this is easier said than done. While some may have expected that the NIL floodgates would open with the loosening of the laws, that hasn’t been the case. There are plenty of headlines about student-athletes driving complementary cars, working with national brands, or booking six-figure deals — but those are much more the exception than the norm. Because it’s not that easy. Even if an athlete nails the content creator game — no easy feat, as Griffin described — there remains the challenge of attracting brands, securing deals, and somehow managing it all alongside a full academic and athletic schedule (and hopefully some of the more traditional ‘fun’ part of the college experience, too). It might as well be another curriculum for athletes hoping to participate in NIL (indeed, some universities now have classes related to the creator industry). There is another level of education available to student-athletes now, Griffin explained, and it will serve them well as students and athletes.

“I think a lot of athletes they see maybe teammates of theirs or people at other schools who play the same position or same sport succeeding and the thing is, they have no idea how it happens or they think there’s some trick to it,” said Griffin, who has done several brand deals, content collaborations, and also has a charitable foundation bearing his name. “And bottom line, the majority of college athletes haven’t done any cash deals, have earned zero $0 through name, image, and likeness.

“Those who are starting their own businesses in college, or learning through internships or work experience are getting arguably the best part of college during those college years and able to network. And athletes were [previously] barred from that…”It is no surprise that athletes who were getting these maximum contracts in the professional world were going broke because they were barred from participating in any type of business and then you give them the lottery. So now that NIL is here I think it adds to the cumulative nature of student athletes’ education while they’re still in school.”

Griffin is taking full advantage of that education and the opportunities he has as a UCLA student-athlete. And he’s doing so with intentionality about his brand and what makes his NIL stand out among all the other athletes, and individuals in general, that brands could work with. Griffin’s cultivation of his brand in the professional world has led to unique opportunities with businesses like Chase Bank, with whom he co-hosted the Zone In Podcast (alongside NFL player Kavyon Thibodeaux). It all aligns with Griffin’s aspirations of building a career in in the present and future with helping athletes to manage and create generational wealth. He started carving out such a path for his NIL and his brand fro day one, embracing a social network that isn’t the first that comes to mind for the creator economy.

“As soon as I got to UCLA, I built out my LinkedIn, which is really been a hidden moneymaker for me throughout NIL,” said Griffin, who went on to recommend that student-athletes get on the professional-focused platform, “just because I’ve connected with the right people, I’ve built a good following on there, and it adds a dynamic that a lot of other not just athlete creators, but creators in general don’t have.”

Griffin was also articulate in explaining how he wanted to represent himself. And those principles have continued to guide him as a creator, a student-athlete, a brand partner, and a human. Such an understanding and appreciation of his personal brand has clearly been a valuable asset for Griffin, as he described how it guides him and his endeavors.

“It’s really based off three things,” he said. “It’s my personal values. I consider myself a believer, a winner, a provider, and I look for other brands that mimic those values. Then two is the economic value — is the price and deliverables that they’re asking for on par with my market price? Then three is community value, where I find ways to parlay what the brand is about and their expertise and reach, as well as the money that’s coming in because of the deal, and then find ways to create community value.”

As Griffin continues to hone his brand and create value for himself and others, he recognizes how beneficial the holistic experience is for him. A lot of learning in college happens in the classroom, but there’s also a whole lot of education and growth that happens outside the classroom. For student-athletes, the new age for NIL is about much more than making a few bucks, it’s equipping them with skills that will serve them in life for years to come. And isn’t that what the college experience is all about?

“I have earned a good amount of money that I’m extremely grateful for, and have earned the ability to give money away,” said Griffin, who will have both a Master’s degree in education and another in legal studies by the time he’s finished. “But at the same time, it’s the experience that I’m most excited about because I’m creating, I think, a workable template for life that as long as I stay true to myself I’ll be able to continue growing as far as wealth creation.”

**************************************************

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH CHASE GRIFFIN

READ SNIPPETS FROM THE INTERVIEW

Athlete Social Media, Content Strategy, Fan Development

How FIBA 3×3 Constructs and Executes its Social Media Strategy to Build and Engage a Global Fan Base

You spend all that time in school learning proper English and how to write an academic paper — only to realize proper punctuation can be triggering and you can say more with a timely meme than anything too intellectually inspiring.In the world of social media, fluency doesn’t mean knowing the correct verb tense, it’s more important to know the slang that your target audience uses, the colloquialisms that are part of their culture.So when Esteban González was handed the reins to the digital and social strategy for FIBA‘s upstart 3×3 competition, he knew he had to school himself on mastering the language of basketball on social media. Not far removed from learning English, González studied the esoteric language of basketball on social. But it was more than that. FIBA, which governs the sport of basketball globally, has an international audience that spans countries, cultures, and communities all over the world, so the challenge transcended language and culture. González looked to other media outlets that seek to engage global audiences for inspiration, appreciating the challenge that lay before him. He cited the sports media brand Overtime as an outlet worthy of emulation.”[They have] Overtime Spain, Overtime France, and Overtime India — and every one of them has a different tone of voice to be identified with the audience from that country,” said González, who was born and raised in Spain. “Because at the end there are tons of jokes that some people could make in Spain that you would never understand because you don’t have that background or you are not following the most popular streamer in the country and in the end, they are the ones dictating this new vocabulary or these new ways of communicating with the audience.”González emphasized how vital it is to study each country where they seek to engage the fans. When you’re publishing for a fan base in a different country and language, it’s instructive to understand and appreciate the difference between translation and localization. Translating copy is easy enough, sure, but translation falls short for social media. Localization means understanding what resonates, what’s happening in pop culture there, and the slang that’s peppering the language — all of which Google Translate can’t give you. González cites an example of creating content about the South Korean team for fans concentrated in the country thousands of miles away from where González lives and works in Europe.”Before every event, we also try to look at what are the different trends in the part of the world that we are going to,” he explained. “For example, if we have a team in South Korea, we have a nice South Korean team, I need to go and check, okay, what are the best K-pop bands? So then I can make some references in the captions and these kinds of things.”González and his colleagues at FIBA aren’t just thinking about their audience and fans in terms of language and culture, there is also context to consider. The different experiences for local vs. remote fans is something any sports team or league can understand; NBA Commissioner Adam Silver often cites how 99% of fans won’t ever attend a game (as is the case for most pro sports leagues). So while FIBA 3×3 takes great pride in its dynamic, fun-filled live event experience, González recognizes that the gameday experience for the 99% of fans taking it in at home is different. They seek to deliver a meaningful, fun experience for fans in both contexts, whether they’re chatting with fans in the seats next to them or chatting in the rapid stream of messages on YouTube. And these fans are different, González described.”We are convinced that the people who would follow the event online might not be the same person that would like to go to an event on-site because the experience might not be the same for them,” he said. “They are not listening to the commentator, they are not interacting on the YouTube chat, they are not putting a comment on Instagram. And this is something that is really important for us is the community aspect of 3×3.”The community aspect is part of the 3×3 narrative and experience that transcends platform and context. FIBA 3×3 is building something special that fans and players and staff feel a part of, so it’s important that that comes across at all touchpoints, whether in the feed or on the floor. This is where attention to detail and adherence to a cohesive, cross-platform strategy comes into play, when talking the talk turns into walking the walk. It’s great to make fans feel at home when you welcome them to an exciting onsite experience filled with music, food, fun, and 3×3 basketball — but it’s just as valuable to activate those values on social media platforms, too. González described how this plays out for FIBA 3×3 on social, ensuring fans everywhere understand that FIBA 3×3 is a ‘family.'”This family aspect of 3X3 is really important for us and we will even go and trash talk to the comments on social media,” said González, who has been with FIBA 3×3 since 2015. “If we see that someone is criticizing our players or they said ‘Oh I could do this,’ we would say ‘Okay, it’s open to everyone, why don’t you go and try to qualify?’”So, if you come to social media also to try to embarrass our players, we got their backs and we are going to also fight for them and try to protect them on social media to build this family atmosphere.”There’s an intimate feel cultivated along with that familial brand. But the bar for fandom doesn’t mean FIBA 3×3 wants to keep that family small and insular, the goal is to grow the sport and the engagement and awareness around its competitions and content. FIBA 3×3 certainly loves sharing its awesome highlights that capture the attention of fans, casual and avid, across its digital platforms. But there is an emotional connection fans can make with such a global sport, a pride that fans feel when a top player from their country is thriving with FIBA 3×3 or a team representing the country is competing for a 3×3 World Cup title.This is the fun part where the strategy and the study come together. González and his colleagues recognize the opportunity brought forth when the spotlight is shining on a given player and/or country. They can step back and appreciate these opportune times to tap into a given country and spike growth and engagement among fans there.”For example, if we see that we have a lot of or we have the Serbian team is winning a lot of events, we are like okay, let’s think how can we try to boost more people from Serbia,” González said. “If the team from the United States is winning? Okay, how can we amplify the noise in the US? This is the thinking process there is behind this side of the strategy and I think it happens a lot when you have this global sport.”The international nature of the sport means those opportunities do come along when a national team is winning. It also extends more granularly, and more powerfully, through the players. Every player brings along with them a local, and often regional or even national fan base (and social media follower base) that FIBA 3×3 can tap into. So while one of FIBA 3×3’s strategic mandates is to maximize its own channels, it is just as important and valuable to build up player profiles and help individual players grow their reach and engagement.FIBA 3×3 is scrappy compared to its giant basketball counterparts like the NBA, so earned media and external engagement via its players is an important part of the picture. But so is, well, everything. Each piece of content, every minute spent must be done with purpose. It’s why attention to detail like knowing the right memes is worth spending time on, hitting the right spot can make a big difference in fan growth and engagement. This thoughtful mindset extends to everything González does in his role and he described the framework FIBA 3×3 uses to ensure they always have the right focus, citing three strategic pillars.”The first [pillar] is to develop stars and help the players build their own profiles,” he explained. “The second one is to get new fans and the maximum reach so that we can bring new fans to the sport. And the third one, of course, is making the partners happy because they are also the ones that are helping us to be where we are right now.”So every post that we put out there has to at least fulfill one of the three key pillars that we have identified for the strategy. If it’s not bringing value to the partners, if it’s not helping us to bring new fans, or if it’s not helping to boost the profile of one of the players, why are we posting this? So it has at least to be in one of those categories for us to create that piece of content and put it out there.”Okay, so I lied in the introduction of this article. Proper punctuation does matter. Proper, according to the platform and audience, that is. Every detail matters. We gotta sweat the small stuff and study the platforms, verbiage, memes, trends, and communities like we’re cramming for a final. Everyone that works in social media is a lifelong student and it’s the most studious that will ace the test on every selected platform, every day, with every post.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ESTEBAN GONZALEZ

Athlete Social Media, College, Sponsorships

Why Athletes Were and Still Are the Original Influencers — If They Want to Be

There’s this notion that athletes have to build their brands. If they’re not making the most of their time in the sports spotlight and growing their brands (in the form of social media clout), they’re deficient, missing out, or even negligent.

But it’s not so black and white. It’s like the 7-foot teenager whom everyone expects to try and make it big in basketball or the Rookie of the Year that bursts onto the national radar — if they’re not maximizing that opportunity, they’re doing it wrong.

But the thing about sports, and what differentiates athletes from professional influencers and creators who literally make their living from social media clout, is that it’s largely gravy for the most elite athletes. The marketing and branding opportunity, however, can be transformative helping to create value for universities, leagues, teams, and, yes, the athletes themselves and their families.

Dakota Crawford, Head of Marketing for athlete influencer marketplace platform MarketPryce, has encountered just about every variation of athlete in his career. He worked with IndyCar drivers whose livelihood was directly affected by their attractiveness to potential team sponsors. He helped National Hockey League (NHL) players build their brands, an ancillary goal for many who already had millions guaranteed thanks to years-long contracts. And now at MarketPryce, Crawford works with athletes of all sorts, particularly college athletes at all levels, many of whom have a brief time in the spotlight to capitalize on that athlete advantage.

Crawford has come to appreciate that the different circumstances in which athletes find themselves affect the sense of urgency they feel to build up a brand that’s all their own.

“There are a couple of ways I think of it,” said Crawford, who helped the NHL launch and grow its Player Social Development Program before joining MarketPryce. “One is like this graph of an x-axis and a y-axis where one [axis] is how good are you at your sport and how influential are you on the field or on the ice or what have you. The other is how much do I need to put my personality out there? And they’re inverted lines, right? So if you’re Alex Ovechkin, you don’t necessarily ever need to do anything that shows off your personality. You’re good enough at hockey that you have a built-in following and they’re gonna be excited if you post anything…

“If you are a rookie playing in Anaheim, you have a slightly different challenge and I think you have to come in ready to put yourself out there, build your brand. And that’s even more so the case for the athletes we’re working with now at MarketPryce, who are D1, D2 volleyball players — your performance on the court isn’t gonna carry you to stardom on social…”

Athletes have so many built-in advantages that those others, the professional social media influencers, do not. First, they arrive with [and live] stories that are appealing to followers and to brands. No athlete reaches the pinnacle of their sport without a lot of sacrifice, hard work, and aspirational talent. Second, while creators find themselves on a perpetual hamster wheel of content creation, athletes often have photos, highlights, and stories flowing by nature of their occupation, coming from leagues, agents, teams, and media. Crawford called out this valuable benefit for athletes but noted that for the non-Ovechkin-like athletes to go to that next level, they need to do a little more.

“We would tell players [at the NHL] we can only do so much for you, first of all, but what we can cover is the base that is your on-ice performance. I can help you celebrate your biggest moments on the ice, I can help you have great assets to share, to support NHL campaigns like Hockey Fights Cancer or something to post during pride month or whatever it might be,” he said. “But the most engaging thing you can put out is what you are willing to do yourself. 

“I think I would tell any college athlete who we work with now ‘Figure out how to put your personality out there. Tell your story, do it authentically. If you get a hype video from the team that you play for, great; post that. But it can’t be the only thing that you post.”’

Crawford and his colleagues saw that promise come to fruition during the height of the pandemic in 2020, as players had nothing but time and TikTok took the world by storm. That enthusiasm and activity dissipated, however, as Crawford said many NHL players largely went back to the perhaps excessive humility once things went back to (kind of) normal. But something else magical started to happen as Crawford and his team found a young, willing group of up-and-coming star players.

Working in collaboration with the league, Anaheim Ducks rookie Trevor Zegras became the ‘poster child’ for what it could look like to mix the spoon-fed sports highlights with the ‘put yourself out there’ mentality. And that took it to the next level, for Zegras and for the league.

“We equipped him to post around [his viral] moments and that’s great. And it’s kind of like we talked about — because he was doing awesome things he’s getting more engagement so he didn’t have to lean into it with his personality to keep those numbers going up,” Crawford described of Zegras’s ascendance in his 2021-22 rookie season, highlighted by a viral video the league made for Zegras representing his anti-highlights, a ‘lowlights’ video of Zegras messing up at times.

“Not every player was willing to laugh at themselves in that way, but Trevor was, and we learned that, after six months, a year of working with him through the first stages of his career…”To me, that was the moment where I was like, ‘We did this.’ We really got a player excited, bought in, and posting something that moves the needle for his brand and for the league.”

A new generation of athlete is here. One that recognizes the opportunity to be more than an athlete, that the combination of being a superstar athlete and a human is powerful. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Athletes were always the original influencers, anyway, and they’re starting to realize the opportunity that offers.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH DAKOTA CRAWFORD

Athlete Social Media

How Athletes Can Begin Preparing for their Post-Playing Life the Day their Career Starts

    When did you start planning for your retirement?

    Maybe it was the first time you faced down years of student loan payments. Or when you opened that Roth IRA. Or perhaps when you looked into your company’s 401(k).

    We spend more years planning for retirement than actually being retired from our careers. Except for professional athletes. They’re not thinking about building a career that’ll last past their 30s — they can’t, really, if they want to be among that top 0.00001% of their sport good enough to make a living playing it.

    So the harsh truth is that the majority don’t make it or don’t make it long. And then they have to enter the real world, starting from scratch — so they think. They’re behind their peers in their generation, some believe. But it’s easy to focus on what athletes may lack, better to reframe by accounting for the unique advantages they have, the experience they get, and the skills they develop. This is what Dr. Caleb Mezzy is working to do and we recently discussed his research, findings, insights, and recommendations.

    “You are an athlete for a period of time…,” said Mezzy of the opportunity-laden window of notoriety athletes have during their playing careers. “When you’re an athlete, you have this open door to just say, ‘Hey, I’m a player on this team, I’m gonna be in this town, would you like to meet?’ And you can meet any professional in the world…

    “Maybe you can get 7 or 8AM coffee with some high-ranking CEOs in California or in Arizona or Las Vegas, whatever it may be. Those are strategies that we can put into place.”

    It’s also about skills — “transferable skills,” says Mezzy, who is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management and Business at Neumann University — skills are appealing on a resume and go beyond reading a Cover 2 defense (but there are analytical thinking skills evident in doing that, too!).

    “Transferable skills are such a huge part of athletes going into the workforce…,” Mezzy explained. “Because they work so hard to get here [and] they don’t know how to articulate the skills that they’ve acquired into a different [occupation]…

    “Bridge that gap, tell that story, I think that’s the beauty there…Look at what transferable skills can we bring to the table because of what we did, because of who we were, and now where we’re going?”

    Social media changed the game, too. And as generations of athletes with more social media savvy and propensity enter — and leave, whether by their choice or not — their pro sports career, social media can be a key lever to pull. No matter what an athlete may want to do after their playing career, an audience has value. And if athletes play their cards right during that special window of time, they can accrue a lot of capital.

    “I think that their digital presence plays a role. I think that the ability to network and find other people, other careers, kind of like the exploratory phase of career development could really help them in their next phase in life,” said Mezzy, who also runs an athlete transition practice, Grit and Glue.

    “[Retirement] is an ongoing process because the minute you get drafted or signed and you’re on a team, it’s inevitable that you are going to retire…

    “So at that point, when you know it’s an ongoing process, there are different things that you could be doing along the way. A lot of that could be digital-focused. You build up this audience so that when you do retire that you have an audience that you could [activate].”

    There’s a phrase that entered the lexicon in recent years, a phrase that Mezzy and I talked about — more than an athlete. When you think others see you only as a pro athlete, it’s natural to get wrapped up in that identity. Many of us non-athletes can relate, too — to the point where it’s difficult to separate one’s identity from their job — but most of our jobs don’t have such an early expiration date. So it’s up to athletes to appreciate and work to cultivate their own ‘more than.’

    “They don’t lead with [being a former athlete], and I think that’s the thing,” said Mezzy, talking about how ex-athletes represent themselves in their more white-collar post-playing careers. “Because we always talk about identity and it’s what you do, not who you are. I think if you don’t lead with it and you’re like, ‘This is the value I bring here,’ that’s great.

    “I’m thinking of all these different players as we’re talking about it, because that player I’m talking [about that works in] financial and wealth management, is gonna be posting about how to manage your taxes for the upcoming season. Or ‘if you’re an MLB player who just got drafted, this is what you should do with your first paycheck.’ So he’s looking at it from both lenses — ‘I manage wealth and finances, but I also come at it from I was a former baseball player.'”

    All this is moot if athletes don’t buy in. If they keep that tunnel vision — which helped them reach that elite level — at the expense of an uncertain career and future. And they have to be willing to ask and answer the tough questions, about what care about or want to put time into after their playing days are through. Because, as Mezzy said, “The minute you get drafted or signed and you’re on a team, it’s inevitable that you are going to retire.” There’s an identity, a skillset, and strengths that transcend the court or playing field. There’s a fully formed person beyond a name, number, and roster listing.

    “When I talk to these baseball players and I say this stuff, they get to a point where like, ‘All I know is baseball,’ and that’s not true,” Mezzy said, with conviction. “That’s all you think you know, because that’s what you’ve done, but what can we talk about things that you’ve learned during baseball that will spread it and then we could open them up or dive into those little pieces of fabric to really find out who you are as a person?”

    Athletes may not be able to play their sport forever. But if they play their cards right, they can set themselves up for life.

    LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH CALEB MEZZY

    Athlete Social Media, College

    How NIL Has Transformed College Athletes into Businesses and Brand Builders — and How Schools Can and Should Help Them

      Brands used to have all the power. This was true in just about every industry. That’s not to say individuals didn’t matter — there were celebrity spokespeople and other ‘stars’ that received acclaim, often in third-party media. But that all began to change, gradually, as the creator economy arose and social media was more about individuals than brands.

      And even in college athletics, where we’re not all that far removed from team-wide social media “bans,” the convergence of the power of the individual was always an inevitability.

      And, just like that, decades-old paradigms in college athletics were transformed — student-athletes on social media wasn’t a distraction or a risk, but the next big thing in the arms race we call recruiting.

      “Texas (Longhorns Athletics) really got behind the opportunity for athletes to make the most of their time there and be representatives of the university,” said Marc Jordan, who worked in social media at the University of Texas Athletics before joining NIL platform INFLCR. “I think as soon as the recruiting part of it caught up where they recognized that recruits were following their athletes and that the more active and the more available and the more that their athletes were on social, the better it was for recruiting.”

      There was a positive correlation between athletes posting on social media and schools getting exposure for their programs to the audience that matters most to coaches — recruits. Even while athletes were barred from monetizing their burgeoning social media brands, there was still value in growing their followers and accounts for a potential future payoff. The mutual benefits meant future recruits could be enticed by seeing not just cool content on athletes’ Stories, but also by the prospect of getting access to such cool content themselves when they played there. Water slides and barber shops only go so far for a generation that virtually worships top social media creators.

      Then NIL monetization came and the floodgates appeared ready to open. For Jordan and his Texas colleagues at the time, they knew many student-athletes would be ready to dive in. But these were just kids; 18-21 year-olds that had spent their lives mastering their sport and their bodies, but with little to no experience managing a potentially professional social media presence.

      “We would work with different teams and we would work with different departments to prepare their athletes, get them onto a better posting cadence, have them understand what’s good and what’s bad, the difference between editorial and commercial content, and reasons why you focus more on that editorial,” said Jordan, who now works with schools across the country that utilize the INFLCR platform. “[We were] making sure that they didn’t just become the NASCAR of Instagram where there are just logos everywhere and there’s no value behind it.”

      It’s all easier said than done. There may be colleges with decades or centuries of experience teaching kids traditional academics and decades of time in teaching student-athletes about sports performance — but they never had to worry much about teaching a diverse set of hundreds of athletes of different backgrounds and experience what it meant to build, monetize, and manage their name, image, and likeness. That’s why many have turned to a number of technology and services platforms that have rapidly arisen to serve this need, most notably INFLCR and Opendorse, which together work with hundreds of colleges across the US to help athletes monetize and build their NILs. For Jordan at INFLCR, he’s found an important part of helping athletes is to create a learning system that will actually work for them.

      “I think in the past I’ve been naive to think that we could give athletes, you know, here are 20 steps to NIL success. No one’s gonna go through 20 steps. No athlete is going to go through and do that,” said Jordan. “We’ve offered some online courses that are quick, that have allowed athletes to learn very quickly — but breaking it down to here are four steps that you can do, here are the things that you could do in the next five minutes that will help you down the road, and then letting them learn as they go; adding more as they do the initial steps, but not trying to overload them too quickly, because there’s one thing these athletes don’t have [is] time.”

      Athletes (and, well, students in general) may not get too excited about their chemistry or English lit class (some do!), but when you start to talk about making money from their NIL, ears perk up. This is when the fun starts, when athletes go from potential pitchmen for their sports programs to start-up businesses in their own right — the business of being them. Just like they work with a team dietitian to break down their nutrition, a strength coach for muscle, and a position coach for their sport — it only makes sense for athletes to get down to the food-log and film-study level of developing a strategy to make their NIL the best it can be. This is the kind of analytical work athletes can get behind, because success can be life-changing. But it’s not easy. Jordan starts at the foundation, discussing who the athlete’s social media audience is and how that changes the day they commit to the school and step on campus.

      “We talk to [the athletes] about [brand] and we also break down kind of their audience because we [approach it] for what [their audience] is that day,” Jordan explained. “So let’s say they want to build their brand in a certain area, we talk to them a little bit about, ‘Okay, well, think about your social media now.”

      Jordan went on to explain the different segments that often comprise an athlete’s audience, from their childhood communities to fans of their high school team, fans of their college team, and everyone in between and beyond. But as athletes get more intentional about their soon-to-be professional brands and who they want to be, it can be a challenging balance to serve the various buckets of their social media audience while also evolving themselves as a person and a brand.

      “As you are figuring out content and as you’re figuring out brand building, [you need to understand] that when you post things and when you want to get interaction, you have to at least satisfy one of those buckets or groups,” said Jordan. “But the more of them that you can get interested in that type of content, the better and higher engagement it’s gonna have.

      “So as you’re adding in different things — like, if you’re interested in music in fashion — understand that those are gonna be harder things to build early on because you’re adding a new type of audience into your current following…We want to make sure that they are setting up their audience to care about them for when they aren’t competing anymore, and for when they do go in [and] enter the workforce or they retire and sail off into the sunset — we just wanna make sure that that audience sticks with them.”

      As these NIL initiatives evolve — and boy are they evolving quickly — they will gain more tentacles. A water slide or a lazy lagoon or other quirky amenities constructed to woo recruits requires little upkeep, let alone department-wide integration, compared to NIL programs. There are parts of college football programs, for example, that exist in a virtual silo, almost completely removed from the rest of athletics. But NIL practices — they work best when everybody is on board, focusing on making the flowery promises of their press releases come to fruition.

      “The only way for these programs and these things to work is for them to have substance,” said Jordan. “The recruit will be able to see right through any cute announcement or any branded program if there isn’t any substance behind it…

      “We need this symbiosis between [INFLCR] and the athletics department.”

      College athletics programs are no longer just fostering student-athletes. There’s an influencer-like, brand-building, NIL developing practice that’s part of the program, as well. And it’s only getting bigger. The recruiting pitch will be less about the novel amenities the program has and more about case studies on how they’ve helped student-athletes make money and build a valuable brand. For many student-athletes, their four years of college sports could be among the most lucrative of their lives, monetarily and otherwise. That time presents an opportunity — it’s the responsibility of their institutions to ensure they’re able to make the most of it.

      LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH MARC JORDAN

      Athlete Social Media, Social Media ROI, Sponsorships

      The Key to Successful Athlete-Brand Partnerships

      The sports sponsorship and advertising space is evolving in multiple directions. In some ways, analytics and marketplaces and automation can make partnerships like mathematical transactions, no different than the NBA Trade Machine on ESPN.com. But then there are true partnerships — with each side banking on the other, entering into a mutually beneficial agreement with upside; the whole greater than the sum of their parts.

      That sounds good on paper, but what does it look like in practice? While massive athletes and organizations can play the upper hand, the up-and-coming or niche athletes and organizations face a more level playing field. And it’s in those scenarios where the partner in partnerships is even more integral.

      It is at this intersection where Andrew Stallings and Athelo Group are flourishing, with brands investing in athletes and vice-versa, both rising together. Stallings and his team work with some athletes on the rise, others that are at or near the top of their sport, even if their sport is not among those typically shown on SportsCenter every night or debated on First Take. For Stallings’s clients, it’s showing why they’re a great investment — why they’re valuable and how their value is only growing (so invest now!).

      “(These athletes) need somebody to be constantly upselling, showing how I can bring more value, how this is growing, [how] that’s growing,” said Stallings, who is Founder and President of Athelo Group. “If my TikTok’s not working, my email newsletter is. If my email newsletter isn’t working, guess what? We’re starting a subscription box service in the next three months. They just want us to be constantly in that person’s ear to help build them.” 

      Stallings added that the athlete should show that same interest in learning about the goals, values, and opportunities of their brand partners, too. “They should learn, they should be able to understand the brand,” he said, “the company, the morals, the people that they’re working with and representing; because [then] social content, messaging, and really explaining to their own audience why they work with a brand is gonna come second to none. It’s not gonna be just hashtag ad.”

      The opportunity is boundless for athletes as the creator economy builds out more avenues for activation, as Stallings alluded to above. The most appealing partners in the sports space, in any space, are offering not just ad space, but a platform; a platform built around them. The savvy athletes are dipping their toes, if not diving all the way, into a number of tributaries that can activate their brand and engage their fans — and present new avenues for partners to come along for the ride. Stallings talked about the partnership marketing piece to athlete sponsorships; while a select few superstars may have deals thrown at them like scripts to a movie star, for most of the sports world, there’s a marketing, buy-and-sell aspect.

      “(Brands) want to converse with agencies and teams and athletes and influencers that have a diverse portfolio of assets for them to activate against,” explained Stallings, whose Athelo Group has formed and activated marketing partnerships with athletes and brands since 2018. “They don’t all need to be built out. You don’t need to have a million followers across every single platform you work with. You don’t need to have audiences with massive buying power.

      “What you do need to show is that you’re working towards and you’re trying and you’re steadily building and finding the success to be able to provide case studies to these brands of what is working, what can work, and what can be better with their help…They’re looking at how can this individual or how can this agency bring forth more assets to complement existing campaigns, further brand’s activation ideas and stuff that we have — how can they complement and be a supplemental resource to us?”

      There’s a different feel when both parties are on the same side of table. There’s a desire, and even instinct, to not plan to execute the minimum requirement combined with the least necessary effort. Instead, the sense of teamwork and genuine connection can entrust and empower each side to optimize how they put the partner’s campaign into action. There is a positive feedback loop at play — the more believable the athlete activation, the more their authenticity and appeal to fans increases, thereby adding to the athlete’s value as a partner. Pretty cool, huh? Stallings calls it the “good stuff” and goes into detail about the realistic, ideal scenario.

      “(You) find the authenticity, find the pivot, and be prepared when things don’t perform the way that the brand is expecting them to, be prepared to offer up alternatives, be able to give more and more before you’re just sending over that invoice,” he said. “Because that’s the good stuff, right? Like, you might be educating them by saying ‘Hey, if this is just an Instagram campaign, I get that you want to carousel, but I’ve been seeing great value with Reels. Do you mind if, for you, on the house, I just experiment by mixing your product in on this Reels post and let’s see how it goes?’

      “A lot of people won’t do that. But if you’re one of those more lesser-known creators with value and upside, take the risk. What’s it gonna do? It’s gonna be an extra hour of work for you and you know what? You might have gotten yourself three more campaigns because of it. So you have to always be willing to overdeliver a little bit.”

      In order to deliver (and overdeliver) and optimize, it’s essential to understand what success means for each side. That goes back to understanding objectives and strategies, to be sure, but the KPIs presented can also expose a bit about the relationship. There are transactional, immediate and visible ‘ROI’ partnerships, and then there are those may include more long-term, penetrating partnerships that expect to last a long time. Both types, and those in between, can be seen all over, but Stallings knows the type he likes to look for for Athelo’s clients.

      “For some people [ROI means] big numbers, that’s all they want. Other people they’re like, man, we want signups. We want link clicks. We want sales,” said Stallings, who worked at Octagon, among other stops, before founding Athelo. “I think the worst nightmare you can ever have when working with a brand or an agency or anybody is if they are 100% sales-driven and nothing else, [it’s] probably best for you to walk away because they are not seeing the bigger picture of the authenticity of a relationship and they probably haven’t done the homework on your audience.”

      Athletes thrive when working as part of a team. They want to be versatile, multi-tool players. And they will study and adjust and do what it takes to win. That all sounds like a winning formula for their competitive endeavors and well beyond.

      LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH ANDREW STALLINGS