College sports are booming—and college athletes are earning like the pros. Five years after the NCAA opened the door to name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation, college athletes can earn money from their schools, donors, collectives, brands and their own audiences. But the NIL revolution isn’t fixing the one thing it was designed to: lack of fair payment for student-athletes.
The stakes of the NIL era trace back to O’Bannon v. NCAA, the landmark case that challenged the premise that student-athletes could generate commercial value for their schools while receiving nothing in compensation. The lawsuit ultimately established that the rules were subject to antitrust scrutiny, and the Ninth Circuit found the restrictions on athlete compensation too restrictive, opening the door for a system that allows student athletes to monetize themselves. When NIL rules changed in 2021, the initial promise was straightforward—student-athletes would finally be allowed to make money from their own identities.
But according to Blake Lawrence, a former college football linebacker and co-founder of NIL technology company Opendorse, the marketplace that followed is a very complicated one that is a far cry from a fair market.
“Information is necessary to create a fair market,” Lawrence told Fortune, adding that 67% of school compensation tracked by his company goes to athletes without agents. This has pushed student-athletes to maximize their earnings because there isn’t a professional intermediator, which in turn led donors to begin pooling money, brands began signing athletes and fans began buying jerseys. And Opendorse’s data suggests the market is expanding faster than forecast.
“Information is necessary to create a fair market,” Blake Lawrence, co-founder of NIL technology company Opendorse told Fortune. Lawrence said 67% of school compensation tracked by the company goes to athletes without agents. In other words, about two-thirds of athletes receiving compensation do not have professional representation helping them determine their value. And that information gap has led players to find ways to maximize their payout.
According to Lawrence, NIL today is just a glimpse of what happens when athletes realize knowing the market can be as valuable as being good enough to participate in it.
Some players have taken compensation into their own hands. College football kickers have started communicating with each other through informal group chats and social media to negotiate contracts, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The report noted that kickers shared information about what comparable players were making to give them a better sense of what they can ask for.
Starting kickers at Power Four schools are averaging roughly $225,000 this season, up from 60.9% from a year earlier, while some are receiving as much as $600,000, according to the Journal.
But even with the booming growth of college sports, the market hasn’t translated into the financial transparency necessary to keep pay honest. According to Lawrence, an athlete’s total economic package can consist of school payments, collective money, brand deals and other commercial arrangements. But there is no NFL-style centralized database that contains every college contract.
Lawrence said professional sports offers a look into how financials should look, with historical contracts readily available to teams and agencies—to give both sides information when they negotiate. College sports, however, lacks that system. But there are still ways to still maximize NIL compensation.
Social media makes you an “anomaly”
The biggest NIL deals are relatively easy to identify. A quarterback who is among the best players in the country and has millions of followers will obviously have large commercial value. But a player who is exceptional at the sport but lacks notoriety is a different story.
Lawrence describes earning potential for college athletes as a combination of two factors—athletic ability and social media reach.
“If you are good at your sport and have good socials, you’re in high earning potential,” he said. And that creates what he calls an “anomaly” athlete—someone whose athletic ability and marketability combine to make them considerably more valuable than what either characteristic would suggest on their own.
The Opendorse president pointed to former LSU gymnast and social media influencer Livvy Dunne and former Heisman trophy winner and current NFL player Travis Hunter as examples of “anomalies.”
Hunter, Lawrence said, represents an extreme version of this model because his audience can retain value even if he never plays football again.
“Travis Hunter could stop playing football tomorrow,” he explained, “and never have to get a real job because he built an audience that follows him for the rest of his life.”
Agents can lift the curtain
Lawrence said representation is becoming one of the biggest factors in securing a “good” NIL deal because an agent working with multiple athletes can accumulate information across schools and negotiations. That can give an agent a broad view of the market and use that information to negotiate the highest deal for their clients.
“A good agent is an individual with information that can help the athlete make a more informed decision,” he said. The common denominator falls on leverage.
“Let’s say a general manager offers an athlete $50,000 a year to play for their team,” Lawrence noted. “That might be more money than that kid has ever heard of in his life. Their parents may even think that is a life-changing outcome. What they don’t know is the player that plays right next to them that has an agent that negotiated a $500,000 a year deal for the same position. Now that’s information asymmetry.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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