🔒Agents, lawyers, marketers see opportunities, unanswered questions in NCAA’s name, image, likeness policy change

New rules allowing college athletes to profit from the use of their name, image or likeness could turn out to be a mixed bag for sports agents, lawyers, marketers and others in Connecticut looking to snatch up a piece of the new market, with industry insiders pointing to a long list of legal uncertainties and likely meagre earnings for all but the most elite college players.

Less than a month after the NCAA dropped its long-standing ban on compensating players beyond scholarships, experts largely agree the change will not automatically open up a cash spigot for most athletes or their representatives.

But that doesn’t mean the so-called “NIL” sector is devoid of opportunities, especially for local sports agents, law firms and others looking to educate players about their options, and young people who may be interested in forming and growing a marketable brand on social media during their four years on a college team.

In Connecticut, star athletes on the high-profile UConn men’s and women’s basketball teams could be the biggest financial winners of the policy change, although colleges across the state are implementing policies around the new rules, in case their student athletes choose to participate and potentially cash in.

“The average student athlete is not going to make a ton of money,” said Jason Belzer, managing partner of Student Athlete NIL, a company that will help pair brands with college athletes. “That said, this is going to be a nine-, ten-figure industry, and over the next few years, they will be getting more of that.”

Paydays will depend not only on a player’s skill on the court or field but on their social media followings, which will determine their leverage with advertisers. Most college athlete-level marketing will likely be done through sponsored posts on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, mirroring the methods of long-established influencers.

The archetypal example of that hybrid star athlete and social media presence could be Paige Bueckers, the UConn women’s basketball point guard and winner of numerous national player of the year awards. Bueckers has around 863,000 followers on Instagram and over 335,000 followers on TikTok, which, according to sports marketing platform Opendorse, could translate to $382,000 in advertising earnings per year.

But if she ultimately opts to cash in on NIL deals, the windfall that awaits Bueckers will be the exception, not the rule.

“It will be culled down to a small number of kids who could make a lot of money,” said Joe Linta, a veteran NFL agent and president of Branford-based JL Sports. “If these are above-board transactions, in most cases, [advertisers] are going to look at a student athlete’s followers on Instagram and Twitter and maybe pay them $500 to tweet about their product.”

One example would be a restaurant in a medium-sized college town paying a locally-prominent player a few hundred dollars to take a picture or film a clip promoting their business. These types of social media-based advertisements — not glamorous endorsement deals with Nike or Adidas — are probably as far as most college players, even some exceptionally talented ones, will ever go.

And the competition for those opportunities, at least beyond small-scale local promotions, could be fierce.

Casey Muir, senior director of football at Stamford-based sports and entertainment agency Octagon, noted that marketing budgets for most industries have not increased.

“These athletes are coming into it and they’re going to be fighting for the same slice of the pie as the professionals and the influencers,” Muir said.

A profusion of small deals, in which companies hire a large number of athletes to promote their products or services and pay each relatively little, has left advertisers holding all of the cards, according to Muir.

“A lot of brands are clearly winning the value battle as compared to individual athletes,” he said.

He also worries about the language folded into NIL agreements, including provisions that indemnify the partnering brand or give companies ownership of the content players create.

“I’ve seen some of the contracts going around, and they’re not putting the student athletes in the best position,” Muir said. “Brands are getting ridiculous deliverables in exchange for small dollars.”

Openings, opportunities

This new reality could end up creating more headaches than opportunities for agents, including several based in Connecticut, according to Belzer.

“Within the established sports agencies, [NIL] is one of the worst things that could have happened,” he said. “Maybe not the worst thing, but it’s certainly not beneficial.”

Before the NCAA rule change, agents could largely wait on the sidelines, scoping out exceptional players over the course of their college careers and moving in with offers as the players prepared to go professional. Now, Belzer said, agents will feel the pressure to preemptively sign underclassmen who may be promising but ultimately unproven just to cement a future business relationship.

“Before, you would have just signed Trevor Lawrence,” he said, referring to the Clemson University star quarterback and first overall pick of the 2021 NFL Draft. “Now, you have to sign 20 kids and hope that one of them is Trevor Lawrence.”

Others, however, see an opening for agents who can more directly relate to the college-age players they’re working with.

“A creative young entrepreneur is going to see an opportunity,” said Robert Romano, an assistant professor of sports management at St. John’s University in New York City. “It’s going to be someone younger who understands the importance of social media.”

Up until this year, the NCAA had barred college players from accepting any compensation that could be construed as a “pay to play” arrangement, arguing that it was necessary to keep college athletics distinct from professional sports. That position faced increased scrutiny as colleges and universities signed multimillion-dollar contracts to televise basketball and football games, and in 2014 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the organization’s ban on certain payments to players violated federal antitrust laws.

A second high-profile case before the Supreme Court this year largely reaffirmed that decision, formally opening the door to the NIL era.

Some gray areas

But the ruling leaves more questions than answers, especially when it comes to the level of control colleges and universities can exert over student endorsements.

The University of Connecticut, for its part, has brought some clarity to the issue by adopting a formal set of NIL-related policies.

The rules require that student athletes disclose all agreements they enter into and prohibits them from using any university logos or marks in their paid advertising. Coaches, boosters and staff are barred from helping facilitate endorsements.

The university is also partnering with Opendorse to educate student athletes about building and protecting their brands and rights.

Still, industry insiders see gray areas.

Romano said the NIL era could pose a challenge for college athletic departments if major brands decide that, instead of sponsoring an entire team, they only want to do business with one or two standout players. That change would not only hurt a lucrative athletic program like basketball or football but also the many non-revenue-generating sports they fund.

Linta worries about the role alumni could play in recruiting players and steering them toward certain sponsorship deals. At some point, the interests of the players and their school are bound to be tangled up.

“It’s opening Pandora’s box,” he said.