Listen to episode 292 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Brendan Hall, Esports Coordinator and Faculty, Endicott College.
88 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube
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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
On episode 291 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Solly Fulp, Executive Director, NIL Growth and Development for Learfield and Grant Jones, SVP, Head of Content for Learfield.
What follows are some snippets from the episode. Click Here to listen to the full episode or check it out and subscribe to the podcast via Apple or listen on Spotify or YouTube.
Listen to episode 291 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Solly Fulp, Executive Director, NIL Growth and Development for Learfield and Grant Jones, SVP, Head of Content for Learfield.
75 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube
WATCH IT:
Posted by Neil Horowitz Follow me on Twitter @njh287 Check out my LinkedIn articles
If you’re reading this, it’s a minor miracle.
There is so much competition for attention and mindshare in general, let alone for sports teams and leagues. The established leagues have massive foundations of fans but want unending growth; meanwhile, myriad upstart and emerging leagues are competing to establish their base, often while concurrently growing broad awareness and interest in heretofore relative fringe sports.
It has never been easier to reach masses of people, but it has never been harder to win their hearts and minds.
So how should sports organizations think about earning new fans amidst a cutthroat world where every swipe, click, and second of attention has to clear an increasingly higher bar? And what does ‘fan growth’ even look like in 2025, with endless to ‘engage’ — that oh-so-ubiquitous but nebulous term?
Tom Halls has faced these challenges head-on throughout his career. Today, he and the team at SailGP aim to turn a centuries-old pastime that has persisted for years on the margins of the sports zeitgeist into a sports league that can command the attention of masses around the world. SailGP only had its first season in 2019, born in a perpetually connected world where hundreds of millions of videos get uploaded to platforms every day and social graphs and follower-based feeds were already starting to diminish. SailGP has hit some impressive follower numbers already, but I asked Halls about how meaningful a follower is in 2025 as content consumption and discovery look so different than it did a couple years ago, let alone last decade.
“Our follower growth target is still pretty aggressive for this season, but my point to [SailGP leadership] is if we’re showing an improvement in viewership, if we’re showing an improvement in engagement, if our engagement rate, which is super high, continues to retain at that amount, [that’s most important],” said Halls, who is the SVP of Social for SailGP following a career with stops at several sports organizations. “There are other ways to hook people in now with AI, whether that’s getting smart in how we sign people up top of funnel; at the very purest basis, like email marketing, databases, etc. How do we get them?…
“There’s always an end goal,” Halls continued, after remarking that UGC efforts are another strong signpost of an engaged fan. “A follow is nice, a comment is nice, but in an ideal world you’re watching the broadcast, you’re watching the live stream, you’re engaging, even better if you’re buying a ticket or merchandise. But we’re five seasons in. It takes time, and it takes leagues years to grow these pieces.”
Facebook introduced Pages in 2007. Instagram introduced business profiles in 2014. Those impressive follower numbers many profiles and pages can boast today are comprised of countless users who may not have logged in in a decade, let alone the bevy of bots that have accumulated over the years. That’s not to say one’s followers aren’t meaningful, it’s just that the follower ‘count’ alone falls short, leaving more questions to ask and more substance to (hopefully) uncover.
‘Engagement trumps followers,” said Halls, who spent years on the Meta sports partnerships team. “I’d rather take 150,000 engaged fans than 2 million passive followers,. And I will wager a decent amount of money that if you were to look at the vast majority of follower counts of the big brands, publishers, creators on platform now that have been there for 10-15 years, there is a rather decently-sized stagnant portion of fans.
“I don’t think your follower count opens doors in the same way with sponsors that it used to. I mean, we’ve just re-upped with Rolex for ten years. A brand like Rolex [is] smart, they look beyond follower count, they look at engagement, they look at audience makeup. Sponsors and commercial investors in sports are savvier now than they’ve ever been.”
There’s that word again — engagement. Any engagement is better than no engagement, first of all, but ‘engagement’ in sports can mean a lot of different things. Engagement could mean commenting on a post or creating UGC, it could mean buying some merch or buying a ticket to attend a competition. But no matter where among the engaged segments a user (sure, a ‘fan’) sits, the only way to increase the base of fans overall is to enlarge the surface area of exposure, the addressable audience that even knows you exist.
The key thing to keep in mind is that fan development is not a linear exercise. We can’t grow more diehards without growing more casuals. And we can’t grow more casuals without identifying and converting the curious (Halls discussed a segmenting of curious-casual-core fans). At the same time, the core audience can’t be taken for granted, with all the attention and efforts focused only on the casuals and curious. That’s the challenge and the opportunity — they all matter.
“My point always comes back to that core audience will always be there, and our goal is to increase the size of that core audience and gradually expand each part of that funnel as we go,” said Halls. “It’s okay if you don’t ever come to a race or ever buy merchandise in my eyes; you still have a value to us… When I talk to our commercial and financial teams… I’ll say [those fans are] not as valuable as someone that buys a ticket or a merchandise, but they are still a fan…”
It’s challenging but fun to seek out new fans. It’s easy to target and reach narrow audiences, but when you’re trying to find those potential curious and casuals, developing a broader and more diverse fan base, creativity, diversity of thought, and the willingness to try new things (and at times fail) are critical. The number of interests and trends, the scale of micro-communities, and the avenues of discovery are innumerable; the idea of diverse creative teams and canvassing ideas from everyone is not lip service to some noble ideal — it’s essential if you want a wide, heterogenous, growing fan base. For Halls and SailGP, creativity can come from anyone and anywhere. And in the increasingly algorithm-fueled world of content consumption and discovery, any quality content can find its audience.
“There’s a lot of creativity that flows through that team…So when someone thinks they’ve got a great idea, what we’re trying to do is ensure that that great idea has an audience and it has a fit for it — how do we utilise the fact that so many platforms these days have got A-B testing opportunities? said Halls, who lauded the ability to target unfamiliar audiences explicitly using Instagram’s Trial Reels. “With the ephemeral nature of social, it’s gone and forgotten in 24 hours if it tanks.
“It’s giving social teams that creative freedom and recognizing that what works for senior leadership isn’t going to work for the fan base. We create content based on what we know the platforms want versus what we know we want. And sometimes we have to let go of, you know, being super comfortable around some things, but it works.”
Halls and his team have learned what the platforms want. They know how to ‘go viral’ on TikTok or maximize engagement on Instagram. Sure, senior leaders may want to promulgate the incredible techniques of its athletes and the impressive analytics the competition delivers on its broadcasts — and there’s certainly an audience for all that — but they know that there’s nothing like a capsize or a man overboard if they want to reach millions (expand that surface area) on TikTok. Those viral clips are opportunities, the first touch point on a funnel where some nonzero portion of those millions of viewers will engage and progress along the fan funnel.
All those viral NASCAR crashes or hockey fights or unexpected incidents in SailGP (Halls referenced an innocent ferry interrupting one of their races) — those clips can be catalysts.
“We posted a clip on Instagram [and] we didn’t think anything of it,” said Halls, referencing a clip of a man nearly going overboard. “It did 40 million views in 24 hours. It hit 105 million views [overall]….We know why it went viral because it was eight seconds, you’re watching, you’re waiting to see what happens. When it does happen, you’ve got so many questions.
“And the way we parlayed that into follower growth was everyone that asked a question about that video, we tried to address it either in comment format, or we went and created explainer content around it. So why did he not fall over the boat? Why was he safe? There’s an explainer video and the fact they’re all tethered and they have to run with the tether. What was he even doing on the boat in the first place? Like, why did he fall off the side? It just looks like, because of the angle, it looked like quite a slow turn. Actually, it’s pulling three G’s at that point. Like the guy, you see him, it almost looks like he passes out. So there’s an explainer video on the G forces these guys are going through…
“So how do we introduce all these unique elements to our sport, or how do we introduce it to a new fan?”
There are stories behind every viral clip. And within those stories lie the elements that attracted the casual and the core fans in the first place. Getting the views, those micro-moments of attention, is just the first step. Are you ready when hundreds, thousands, or millions of fans are there sampling what you have to offer with an open mind to find a reason to engage and consume and learn more? Halls called out the alt-casts, so prevalent in sports now, as an example of trying to cater to new, curious or casually interested audiences. Drive to Survive got millions to sample an F1 race, but they’ll only stick around so long if they have no idea what’s going on.
“You have to make that explainer content simple enough that casual fans feel that they can get it,” said Halls, who was admittedly a relative sailing novice before joining SailGP. “And to me, that comes back to that ‘Explain it to me like I’m five’ principle.
“It’s a more subtle way of doing the Nickelodeon broadcast of the Super Bowl, how they break it down. I mean, we’re not at that stage…but that’s the space where we can play with creators.
“I’m still looking for my Snoop [Dogg]-Martha [Stewart] commentary combo. I can’t get Snoop and Martha, I don’t have those kinds of budgets, but can I do something with a KSI or a Kai Cenat; can we get them to commentate alongside?”
In addition to finding entry points and being ready to cultivate and educate the noobs when they do enter, it helps to give fans a reason to care. A sense of affinity and partiality, something and/or someone to root for as the boats compete for victory. It’s why SailGP produces their ‘Racing on the Edge‘ series (their version of Drive to Survive, essentially). The competition also take advantage of the natural patriotic inclination anyone, fan or not, to cheer on their country in any race.
“To me there’s a natural affinity to root for,” said Halls. “There’s a Canadian team, an American team. There are nationality minimum requirements for each of the teams, they’re nationalistic…”
But don’t mistake the fervent nationalism for jingoism. SailGP knows the best way for the competition to grow, the team valuations to rise, and everyone’s boats to rise (had to do it) is to work together. There are cross-team collabs, democratized sharing of data, and an overall collective that they’re building something special together.
Said Halls: “We have the rivalries and they can be really spicy, but I think everyone across the league and the teams and leadership at the moment recognizes that we have to grow as one unit.”
Fan growth isn’t about waiting for people to come to you—it’s about meeting them where they are, creating sparks of interest and curiosity, and steering them into easy entry points. The signals are everywhere, the bait is working—so cast wide, experiment boldly, and recognize every moment of attention as an invitation. The future fanbase is out there, a light breeze at your back. Come equipped with a plan, catch the right wind, and it’ll be smooth sailing ahead.
Listen to episode 290 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Tom Halls, SVP of Social, SailGP.
86 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube
Posted by Neil Horowitz Follow me on Twitter @njh287 Check out my LinkedIn articles
Listen to episode 289 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, a best of, featuring parts of conversations with:
- Michael Murtaugh, College Athletics Administration at Western Kentucky, Arkansas State, Iowa, Montana, now at Buffalo— full episode
- Blake Zimmerman, Texas Tech Athletics, Texas Tech University, now at Austin FC — full episode
- Jonah Ballow, New York Knicks, Minnesota Timberwolves, now at HEARTLENT Group — full episode
- Arielle Moyal, UCLA Athletics, Sacramento Kings, BDA Sports Management, REP1, now at Moyal Enterprises + Positive Athlete INC. — full episode
- Ryan Ellul, National Rugby League (NRL), LADbible, now at Sport Design Australia — full episode
Listen below or on Apple, Spotify and Stitcher.
109 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.
Posted by Neil Horowitz Follow me on Twitter @njh287 Connect on LinkedIn
On episode 288 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Adam Grossman, Founder & former CEO of Block Six Analytics (now Excel Analytics, after Excel Sports Management acquisition, Northwestern’s Masters In Sports Administration program, and co-author of The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry.
What follows are some snippets from the episode. Click Here to listen to the full episode or check it out and subscribe to the podcast via Apple or listen on Spotify or YouTube.
Listen to episode 288 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Adam Grossman, Founder and former CEO of Block Six Analytics (now Excel Analytics, after Excel Sports Management acquisition, Northwestern’s Masters In Sports Administration program, and co-author of The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry.
79 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube
Posted by Neil Horowitz Follow me on Twitter @njh287 Check out my LinkedIn articles