- The student-athlete name, image, and likeness, or NIL, industry has become a big business.
- College players are fielding an influx of offers from collectives, brands, agents, and licensees.
- Here are 20 firms helping athletes navigate NIL work, from dealmaking to education to compliance.
College sports have dramatically transformed in the last two years since the introduction of name, image, and likeness, or NIL, monetization for student-athletes.
This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in.Millions of dollars in advertising spend and licensing deals, once reserved for colleges and universities, are now starting to trickle down to players. The NIL business is still in its infancy, changing month to month as new businesses and ways to make money enter the field.
"It really is the first inning here of a nine-inning game, and rules are pretty wide open right now," said Bill Jula, whose company Postgame helps athletes join influencer-marketing campaigns for big brands.
At first, student-athletes leaned into marketing activities like autograph signings or social-media promotions. Some did Instagram posts in exchange for free products from brands. Others filmed shout-out videos for a fee using platforms like Cameo. Players with greater stardom from their large social-media audiences or participation in widely followed sports like college basketball earned the most.
But that was just the beginning. Student-athletes now earn the bulk of their NIL cash from a new category of funder called collectives.
Collectives are booster club-like fundraising organizations that have popped up around most major universities. Some of these groups pay student-athletes for NIL work in a manner more akin to a salary or retainer than a one-off marketing campaign. The goal of collectives is to drive on-the-field success — and strong collectives can help attract top talent or keep current players on a team for longer.
Student-athletes can earn money from collectives by attending events like autograph sessions and meet-and-greets. Some collectives partner with businesses for endorsement and product deals ranging from food to cars. Another way to make money is by participating in content and storytelling, like the University of Minnesota's Dinkytown Moms series that interviewed student-athletes and their mothers.
Around 80% of NIL spend, which is projected to hit roughly $1.2 billion in 2023, now comes through collectives, per a report released in June by the NIL software company Opendorse.
In a world where collectives dominate student-athlete compensation and college players are now active participants in an increasingly professionalized industry, a slew of companies have emerged to offer services that help NIL stakeholders follow the rules and get paid.
Some, like The Brandr Group and OneTeam Partners, work on group licensing, helping student-athletes and their teammates make money by having their names and likenesses appear on jerseys or playing cards. Others, like Athliance and FanWord, work with athletic departments on compliance or student-athlete storytelling.
Insider is compiling our second list of leading NIL companies that work across the student-athlete NIL space. We determined this list based on recommendations from industry experts, as well as nominations we received from our audience. We reviewed the ways each company aids student-athletes, universities, or other parties like brands and collectives, as well as how the firms are adapting to an industry that is quickly evolving.
Here are those 20 companies, listed in alphabetical order:
Accelerate Sports Ventures teaches athletes how to build their brands
Main clients: Colleges and universities, coaches, student-athletes, collectives
Why it matters for the NIL industry: This consulting and education firm partners with schools including Boston College, Penn State, NC State, Utah, and Delaware to give personalized NIL help to student-athletes, coaches, and collectives.
Accelerate Sports Ventures said it advises hundreds of athletes on building a personal brand strategy and more than 75 coaches on how to best support their players. Founder Doug Fillis told Insider he teaches athletes to understand the long-term effects of NIL, and loves helping players navigate deals to maximize their earnings.
"Accelerate has been so incredibly helpful as I have built my brand and as I have navigated my agreements," Boston College lacrosse player Belle Smith said in a statement provided by the company. "I am so thankful to have someone to call or text with questions and advice."
The company has worked with collectives at these schools to put on multiple six-figure fundraising events. Accelerate said it also gives NIL guidance and workshops to about a hundred community colleges and a hundred high schools.
Altius Sports Partners consults with schools to strategize and bring in NIL deals
Main clients: Colleges and universities, brands
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Altius Sports Partners consults athletic departments on how to handle NIL, both from an education and strategy angle.
Altius said it has partnered with nearly 40 colleges, more than a dozen of which have an Altius NIL general manager who works on-site with coaches, athletes, administrators, and local businesses. At Northwestern, the Altius GM collaborated on a deal with Dunkin' Donuts for the entire field hockey team, Altius said.
"The schools that we work with," said chief strategy officer Tommy Gray, "are the ones who have acknowledged, 'Hey, we have so much going on, and we can't just have one of our senior leaders take this on in addition to overseeing sports and overseeing some of our different support units internally. We need actual experts in this space.'"
Altius said it also works with a small number of brands directly to facilitate NIL deals between companies and athletes, like a recent partnership with Powerade that garnered nearly 2 million views on TikTok across a series of videos and averaged upwards of $1,600 for each of the 35 athletes in the campaign.
Athliance helps schools make sure their NIL deals are done by the book
Main clients: Colleges and universities
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Athliance is a deal-compliance platform built for athletic departments, compliance officers, and other NIL administrators at colleges and universities.
Compliance is a central part of the NIL industry, as student-athletes have to submit deals to their schools for approval to ensure they don't run afoul of NCAA rules, various state laws, and their own university's policies.
Athliance's product PointGuard is designed to help administrators at colleges stay in sync internally as more complicated NIL deals, which could involve multiple athletes or a university's own marks, crop up.
"What we have done is created a way for everyone within the athletic department to communicate with one another about an NIL opportunity," Athliance CEO Peter Schoenthal said. "We call it PointGuard because someone's got to run the platform, whether it's a compliance officer or a director of NIL, but it almost works like a Slack functionality where you can tag a person you need to weigh in from a mitigation and legality and compliance aspect."
"We also have external chat, which allows the university to communicate with the deal bringer," he said.
The company makes money by charging schools an annual subscription fee for access to its services. It said it works with over 25 universities.
Athlytic gets brands involved in athlete-influencer marketing
Main clients: Student-athletes, brands
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Athlytic specializes in helping brands develop influencer-marketing strategies with student-athletes who are already successful content creators and allows brands to pay based on how well the content performs.
Athlytic makes money from subscription and transaction fees, and raised about $2 million in funding from investors interested in the creator economy, according to the company.
It said it connects about 5,000 student-athletes with its 26 brand partners, including Sweetgreen and Shinola. These deals aren't just about smiling with the product on Instagram — Minnesota football players got free Sweetgreen for a year while playing trivia and guessing salad dressings, and 10 athletes got to keep a Shinola watch and gift another to a friend.
"To me, when I think about NIL, really it's just influencer marketing," founder Ashton Keys said. "How can we help brands and support brands now to create content that people resonate with?"
Basepath runs NIL operations software for collectives
Main clients: Collectives, colleges and universities, student-athletes
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Basepath said it works with collectives at more than 50 schools, processing all NIL operations and payments. Using the platform, collectives can both connect with student-athletes for NIL opportunities and fans for contributions and membership.
Basepath said its software has processed in the last year more than $10 million in NIL money flowing between collectives, agencies, universities, and student-athletes. Additionally, more than 2,500 student-athletes use Basepath to process their NIL deals, according to the company.
Basepath is adapting to the newer needs of collectives, like helping them shift away from the non-profit model following recent IRS guidelines. In the last month, the company announced partnerships with five collectives, with more on the way.
Founder and CEO Thomas Thomas Jr. said collectives are in some ways benefiting from the chaos of conference realignment — after signing Washington State's collective earlier this summer, Basepath said it processed nearly $50,000 and 65 new members of the collective amidst the dismantling of the PAC-12.
The Brandr Group allows student-athletes to strike NIL deals as a group
Main clients: Student-athletes, brands, licensees
Why it matters for the NIL industry: The Brandr Group, TBG for short, focuses on student-athlete group licensing deals, where multiple athletes sign on to have their names, images, or likenesses used by a licensee for a fee.
Group licensing can be used to sell jerseys or playing cards featuring current athlete names and photos. It also comes into play for more complicated deals like video-game licensing, as well as standard influencer-marketing deals that feature a group of players, a team, or multiple teams at a university.
The Brandr Group said it represents 15,000 student-athletes and works with over 85 colleges and universities.
Group-licensing deals often involve bundling a school's IP with players' names, images, or likenesses for a co-branded product where both the school and student-athletes get paid. TBG sets up collaboration agreements with schools to streamline deals, but the company only makes money from its cut of the total revenue the student-athletes collect as part of a contract.
"We only sit on the side of the athletes," said Len Stachitas, chief administrative officer at TBG. "We don't work for the school, and no money changes hands between us either way."
Recent deals facilitated by the company include a campaign with Delta Air Lines, Wheels Up, and a University of Mississippi collective, as well as a campaign for the clothing brand Wrangler featuring University of Texas athletes.
FanWord offers content-marketing services for schools and student-athletes
Main clients: Colleges and universities, collectives
Why it matters for the NIL industry: FanWord specializes in NIL content creation and education. It builds mini websites and directories for athletic departments and student-athletes to tell player stories and build their personal brands, offering a form of content marketing for the NIL space. The company also sells educational programming to teach college players how to market themselves.
"We believe that athletes are really the most powerful brand ambassadors for any organizations they represent, whether that's a school, a collective, an agency, et cetera," FanWord CEO Christopher Aumueller said. "We are essentially all about building products that help those athletes build and grow their personal brand."
FanWord works with organizations like colleges, universities, and collectives; the bulk of its roughly 50 partners are schools. It makes money through subscriptions to its content-marketing product, FanWord Stories, and its education and directory products, FanWord Coach and FanWord Directory.
The company has set up athlete directories for universities like Boise State and Oklahoma State and built a storytelling microsite for the University of Memphis. Athlete profiles within directories enable students to highlight their college major and biography, link to social handles, and list out the types of NIL activities they're game for.
Icon Source wants student-athletes to be the CEOs of their NIL businesses
Main clients: Student-athletes, brands
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Icon Source is fully focused on the brand-marketing side of student-athlete NIL, offering a marketplace that connects brands to players. The company manages some campaigns itself, depending on an advertiser's budget and needs, though many deals are handled on a self-serve basis.
Icon Source, which also works with professional athletes, said it has around 20,000 players and over 1,500 brands and marketing agencies connected to its platform.
Its CEO, Chase Garrett, said it isn't targeting deals with collectives or schools, though it does offer a free software solution for universities to have visibility into their student-athletes' brand contracts.
Unlike some other NIL marketplaces, college players set up their accounts directly on Icon Source rather than having their information inputted via a university agreement, ensuring there are no "skeleton accounts," Garrett said.
"We like to think that we keep athletes very engaged," he said, noting the company created iPhone and Android apps to reach student-athletes where they spend their time.
The company makes money from brands and marketing agencies who pay to access the platform, as well as additional transaction fees on endorsement deals set up with athletes. Student-athletes use the platform for free.
INFLCR wants to be a one-stop shop for colleges and universities
Main clients: Colleges and universities
Why it matters for the NIL industry: INFLCR offers a suite of NIL products for colleges and universities and their student-athletes.
Its services include tools to help schools make content around student-athletes, educational programming on NIL for players, a compliance product, and local and global exchanges to connect student-athletes to businesses or other brand-dealmaking marketplaces like MarketPryce and NOCAP Sports. Recently, the company also launched a fundraising product for collectives and donors.
INFCLR said it works with over 200 college athletic departments. It makes money by charging a software-as-a-service, or Saas, fee to its university partners. It doesn't take a fee from student-athlete NIL transactions. Recently launched partnerships include a deal with the University of Georgia Athletic Association to kick off its Georgia Bulldogs Exchange, as well as exchanges with North Dakota State University and Florida State.
"Really what INFLCR offers is a compliance capability, a content-management-sharing platform, and then the ability for athletes to work directly with any interested third party, whether that's a collective or business or a sponsor or a fan, in one secure location," Sean Kelly, INFLCR's associate general manager, said.
Learfield specializes in sponsorship deals and storytelling
Main clients: Brands, colleges and universities
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Learfield coordinates to allow brands in NIL deals with student-athletes to use the logos and other intellectual property of colleges and universities. Learfield represents hundreds of schools in multimedia rights and licensing agreements and has negotiated sponsorships that use NIL with more than 75 of them, with teams on the ground at most of those schools. It fosters relationships with more than 15,000 brands locally and nationally.
"We're sitting in the middle of making those transactions," said Solly Fulp, the executive vice president in charge of NIL at Learfield, "and we're seeing it pick up by the day, and the week. It feels almost like by the hour."
More than a thousand athletes have altogether earned upwards of $8 million through Learfield NIL sponsorships, the company said. Its content division, Learfield Studios, also creates NIL opportunities through storytelling, like its seven-part docuseries sponsored by Cheez-It about University of Michigan football players who stayed for their senior season.
"We now have the opportunity to incorporate the student-athlete voice, and their preferences, and their hobbies, and their superstitions, and how they grew up as a kid — and how that connects with the brand," Fulp said.
MarketPryce aims to be a hub for brands to send free products to student-athletes
Main clients: Brands
Why it matters for the NIL industry: MarketPryce is a student-athlete marketplace that works with over 1,000 businesses, including activewear brand Puma and fashion brand Coach, and more than 4,000 athletes. It recently helped coordinate an NIL campaign for the Amazon film "Air."
The company previously charged athletes a fee for access to its marketplace, but recently changed its business model to make its platform free for players, making brands its main customers.
As part of that shift, the company is leaning heavily into product seeding, an influencer-marketing strategy where a company gifts a product to a student-athlete in exchange for a social-media post or other promotion. MarketPryce charges businesses a monthly membership fee for access to its marketplace to run product-seeding campaigns. For larger activations, such as an in-person NIL event, it takes a cut of spend from a brand's total budget on the promotion.
The company, which has also worked with professional athletes, said it's facilitated more than 8,000 partnerships between brands and players.
"We've been really focusing a lot more on the match for brands and athletes from the start," MarketPryce CEO Jason Bergman said, likening the platform to a dating app. "Every winning partnership — some were more successful than others — is rooted in authenticity. The athletes actually really enjoying the brand, liking the product, believing in the mission, whatever it was."
MOGL says micro-influencer campaigns are driving success in NIL marketing
Main clients: Colleges and universities, brands, collectives
Why it matters for the NIL industry: MOGL offers a NIL-deal marketplace for student-athletes and brands, as well as compliance and education software for universities and collectives. Recently, it also introduced a tool for student-athletes to do personalized video shout-outs, autograph signings, and other direct fan engagements.
The company said it works with over 2,000 brands to facilitate deals with more than 10,000 student-athletes across over 650 institutions, including colleges like the University of Notre Dame, Holy Cross, and Lincoln University, and collectives tied to Washington State University and the University of Texas. It's partnered with brands like Toyota and NBC Sports.
The company makes money by charging annual fees to athletic departments and collectives that use its NIL-management software. Brands also pay a monthly fee to run campaigns through its deal marketplace, plus a transaction charge for payments that MOGL facilitates to student-athletes.
The company said it's seen the most success when companies work with student-athletes that have smaller social-media audiences, often referred to as micro influencers.
"The brands that are truly leading in this space and really growing rapidly through this influencer channel are the ones that are doing it at scale with micro influencers," MOGL CEO Ayden Syal said. "Not only are they more affordable, but they also help to reach a broader audience that can still be hyper-targeted to Gen Z and undergraduate college students."
Nillie helps athletes design and sell their own apparel
Main clients: Student-athletes, fans, collectives
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Nillie allows athletes to design their own branded merchandise. More than 400 college athletes and three collectives use Nillie, mostly from non-Power Five schools that have fewer NIL opportunities, the company said.
Athletes can meet with graphic designers or upload their existing designs, then sell merch to friends, family, and fans through the platform, keeping 70% of sales. Cofounder Wheeler Flemming predicts some of Nillie's highest-performing athletes will make upwards of $50,000 from selling merchandise this season.
"It's a small business for the athlete," Flemming told Insider. "We just give them the tools that they need to do it and handle the whole processing of payments and backend."
Nillie works with three collectives, including HBCU-focused The Icon 1901, which has resulted in more than 100 HBCU athletes selling merchandise on the platform, the company said. Nillie also hosts an NIL podcast and works with its sister company to teach financial literacy to college athletes.
NIL Store sells officially licensed jerseys and other merchandise
Main clients: Colleges and universities, student-athletes, fans
Why it matters for the NIL industry: NIL Store owner Campus Ink already had a large footprint on college campuses with its Greek life merchandise and expanded to incorporate student-athletes. College athletes from any sport can make money selling officially licensed merchandise like jerseys, T-shirts, and hoodies, and they have a say in those designs.
The model started with men's basketball at the University of Illinois, making the team about $100,000 in one season, the company said. It cold-emailed billionaire businessman Mark Cuban, who then invested in Campus Ink and helped NIL Store get off the ground. It's now expanded to 60 schools, about half of which are live on the website, per the company.
Campus Ink CEO Steven Farag said NIL Store pioneered a revenue-sharing model that hasn't been done much in the licensing space — and found paying athletes works.
"It's a lot of untying and unpacking the old way of doing things and educating the industry on that there is a new and better way," Farag told Insider.
Nocap Sports
Main clients: Student-athletes, brands, collectives
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Nocap Sports believes there's no cap on the amount of money athletes can make from NIL, cofounder and CEO Nicholas Lord said. He said his company works with around 500 brands and agencies to get multi-athlete deals for the 20,000 students on its platform.
Lord said quick-service restaurants have made some of the most successful deals for student-athletes given their large presence in college towns. The company said it has executed partnerships with national brands including Coca-Cola, P&G, DoorDash, and Conagra, with whom Nocap organized a deal for the entire Arkansas men's basketball team.
Nocap started applying its brand strategies to collectives this summer, signing South Carolina's Garnet Trust.
"We know we can help these collectives basically establish a new revenue arm to what they're doing by engaging local, regional, and national businesses and having them fund the athlete payments as opposed to just alumni longer term," Lord told Insider.
OneTeam Partners specializes in group licensing agreements for student-athletes
Main clients: Student-athletes, brands
Why it matters for the NIL industry: The collegiate arm of the athlete-marketing company OneTeam has signed more than 12,000 student-athletes to its group licensing program, according to the company.
OneTeam last year partnered with Fanatics for fans to buy official jerseys and t-shirts with their favorite player's name and number. The partnership opens new doors for college athletes to monetize off jerseys sales the way professional athletes have for years.
OneTeam recently joined with EA Sports to bring back its college-football video game in 2024. The game has faced some backlash from the College Football Players Association over compensation.
"We definitely believe similar to any other athlete that if their NIL is included, then they should be compensated for that," OneTeam's senior vice president Shelbi Hendricks told Insider of the partnership.
Opendorse built products to serve stakeholders on all sides of the NIL space
Main clients: Colleges and universities, student-athletes, collectives, and brands
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Opendorse is an all-in-one platform for the NIL space.
The company offers NIL compliance products for schools and collectives, as well as content and education tools and a marketplace feature where colleges and universities can showcase their athletes for NIL deals.
Student-athletes can also join Opendorse independently, even if their university isn't affiliated, to court brand deals or sell paid shout-outs, autographs, and in-person appearances to fans. For more involved NIL campaigns, the company has a team that works directly with brands.
Opendorse said it works with over 150 schools and 115,000 student-athletes.
Student-athletes don't pay anything to use its platform. Opendorse makes money by charging a subscription fee to schools and collectives that use its services. It also collects a fee from brands, marketers, and fans when they do an NIL activity.
By working with most stakeholders across the NIL industry, the company gains insight into the different pain points affecting myriad players in a fast-evolving space, Elizabeth Wyman, an Opendorse spokesperson, said.
The company is not "too attached to one of those markets — the school side, the donor side, the sponsorship side, the student-athlete side — but just looking in from the outside and hearing from all of them what's working and what's not," Wyman said.
OpenSponsorship connects student-athletes with brands for partnership deals
Main clients: Student-athletes, brands
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Though OpenSponsorship primarily works with professional athletes, the company has solidified itself as a major dealmaker in NIL. Brands, which pay a subscription fee to use the platform, can post NIL opportunities like job offerings.
The 8,750 college athletes on the platform can apply and track progress on the deal all through their portal, the company said. Companies can use OpenSponsorship's data on an athlete's social media followers and engagement to choose a target audience. OpenSponsorship takes a 20% commission on deals that pay athletes.
Many of the deals are large activations with multiple athletes across different sports and schools, the company said. For example, Vitamin Shoppe gave products to more than 120 college athletes for promotion using OpenSponsorship.
Founder and CEO Ishveen Jolly said many companies want deals with "the big quarterback," but OpenSponsorship convinces brands to market with all athletes.
"We're female founded, most of our account-management team is female, and we do have this big, heavy focus on diversity," Jolly told Insider. "I'd like to think we're a bit of a champion for the small voice as well."
Postgame runs large campaigns for more than 50 brands
Main clients: Student-athletes, brands
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Postgame said it connects companies with more than 65,000 athletes on its platform for large campaigns with hundreds of athletes at a time.
"Most brands are thinking of this from the standpoint of, 'How do we reach people across the entire country and do some hyper-local targeting through 10 or 20 athletes in those regions?'" Postgame cofounder and CEO Bill Jula told Insider.
Popular brands like Adidas, Crocs, Taco Bell, McDonald's, Reebok, and Urban Outfitters have partnered with student-athletes through the platform. Postgame also built and runs the technology for Adidas' ambassador program that works with college athletes at Adidas-sponsored schools to promote the brand.
Postgame's primary revenue stream comes from the management and service fees it takes from more than 50 brand partners.
SANIL works to make collectives more stable and sustainable
Main clients: Collectives, fans, donors, brands
Why it matters for the NIL industry: Student Athlete Name Image Likeness, better known as SANIL, manages and operates more than 30 collectives, with all athletes at schools including the University of Oklahoma, Georgia Tech, and Notre Dame signed to them as independent contractors, according to the company. Athletes can make money through appearances, social-media endorsements, and media advertising.
SANIL said it has worked with more than 50 brands to help facilitate NIL campaigns, including Under Armour, Steve Madden, and Meta. The company, and the NIL industry, primarily run on donor dollars, but cofounder and CEO Jason Belzer said he's hoping for a natural shift to where a majority of NIL deals come from brand endorsements and marketing.
"We are trying to build sustainable businesses around these student-athletes," Belzer told Insider.
Belzer said the company's gross overall revenue has already surpassed the eight-figure mark in 2023. SANIL in June hosted its second annual NIL Summit with more than 350 student-athletes, where more than 100 athletes took part in the largest single NIL activation to-date: a yoga class put on by Lululemon.
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