Note: These pieces were part of the feature story in the Fall 2023 print edition of Movement magazine. You can find the full feature here. 

On July 1, 2021, a lot changed for Cameron Williams. That day, the sport management student and U-M basketball player woke up to a new reality, one where she was allowed to make money from endorsements and partnerships.

Previously, collegiate athletes could be given scholarships to cover expenses like tuition and room and board. But college sports had long been regarded as an amateur sphere — and not just because the athletes’ games hadn’t fully matured yet. The idea that student-athletes were unpaid had become foundational to college sports.

Yet that foundation has been shaking for a while now. Collegiate athletes have questioned why, given the amount of revenue many universities were pulling in from sports, the athletes themselves weren’t permitted to profit off their own talents, or, at the very least, sign sponsorship deals based on the fan bases they’d built.

In summer 2021, a series of court cases and a policy change by the NCAA cleared the way for the latter.

“It’s been a controversy for such a long time,” Williams says. “We were waiting for this day to happen.”

The rule change ushered in not only unprecedented opportunities for college athletes, particularly women, but also a new sector that had the sport management world salivating at the fresh possibilities for marketing and partnerships.

“It’s a dynamic space,” says Adriana Phelan, a lecturer who oversees SoK’s sport management internship for credit program. “Organizations are trying to figure out: How do you leverage this set of assets you have now? What are the monetization opportunities? But then, also, how do you think years down the road? When you’re playing chess, every move you make changes the board, and a lot of moves are being made right now.”

So much movement has created unexpected consequences. Some donors have decided to give to collectives, new organizations that have sprung up to manage NIL fundraising and partnerships, instead of the athletic departments and alumni associations that count on their funds. The availability of NIL opportunities — or not — has contorted the recruiting process as prospective student-athletes increasingly make decisions about where to attend school based on their NIL earning potential.

“The essence of NIL is very good,” says Chrissi Rawak (SM ‘92), the director of athletics, community, and campus recreation at the University of Delaware. “Its intent is to give student athletes the opportunity to earn money for their talents. That’s the right thing to do. But it is tough to anticipate all the ways NIL is playing out and the impact it is having across the board.”

SM students, faculty, and alumni, though, have already proven that they aren’t afraid of the unknown.

They’ve joined the NIL fray in school and at work to learn how to play in an ever-changing space and, ideally, improve the way NIL functions for everyone involved.

“It’s about getting to experience something new,” says Daniel Rubin, a sport management student who interned with NIL agency MOGL for more than a year. “Something that very few people can say they’ve experienced.”

Here’s how they’re navigating the new.

THE DEAL WITH COLLECTIVES

A new type of organization has emerged to handle partnerships and fundraising for the NIL collegiate space.

When the NCAA passed its interim NIL policy, a sizable question remained: Who was going to manage the financial transactions for student-athletes? Universities and athletic departments were still not allowed to pay student-athletes, especially for external activities.

Enter the concept of NIL collectives. These independent organizations often work with athletes and donors at a specific university to secure deals and manage fundraising. More than 200 collectives now exist across the country, and they all operate a little differently.

“Some of them are well formed, well organized, and well supported,” says Brad Wachler (SM '99), an attorney with the Sports Advisory & Consulting Practice Group at law firm Lewis Rice. “Others are far less structured. It certainly runs the gamut from school to school and depends on the sophistication and resources of the individuals charged to organize and manage the collectives.”

One of the most prominent NIL organizations in Ann Arbor is Valiant Management Group. In April, Valiant launched a new collective called Champions Circle, which deals with individual donors and is led by alum Anna Britnell (SM ’09).

“As a former student-athlete at U-M, I’m passionate about their overall experience on and off the field,” Britnell says. “So this was a great opportunity to do something new for the university I love most.”

Champions Circle operates a public membership program with different levels of monthly or yearly donations, starting at $10 a month or $100 a year. In return, contributors receive rewards ranging from swag to signed memorabilia to exclusive fan events.

In order to receive any money through Champions Circle, athletes are required to participate in sponsorship activities (like promoting a brand), fan events (such as public signings), or community service engagements (charity golf outings, youth camps, etc.)

Hail! Impact, which operates as a 501(c)(3), has a different model. Donors primarily give to specific sports teams, although they can also contribute to a general fund. The majority of their donation typically goes to a local charity that has partnered with that team. (Hail! does make exceptions for donors who'd like their dollars to go directly to participating student-athletes, but they're not able to receive a tax deduction if they choose that route.) 

The student-athletes then participate in volunteer work with that charitable partner, with an average commitment of two to four hours per event, and also receive a portion of the donation given toward this effort.

“Some high-profile athletes make a lot of money by individual endorsements and partnerships,” says Kathy Babiak, a professor of sport management and an advisor for Hail!. “Others don’t have that name recognition and reputation, but they can still benefit from NIL. So some collectives are trying to figure out how to make NIL opportunities more accessible to a wide range of athletes.”

(SOME) WOMEN ARE WINNING

Can NIL give female athletes the opportunities they’ve been missing out on?

When Ron Wade analyzed the results of a student survey about the new NIL rules, the sport management clinical assistant professor was surprised at the number of comments about equity concerns.

“A lot of students were asking whether just the football and men’s basketball teams would get NIL money or whether women’s sports and some of the Olympic sports would benefit, too,” Wade says.

So far, the answer to that question is mixed.

“We know that social media has given women a platform to control their own narratives,” says sport management professor Ketra Armstrong, director of the Center for Race & Ethnicity in Sport, who has spoken to media outlets about the increased earning potential that NIL has offered women. “We’re in this era of social consciousness where women are saying, ‘This is who I am,’ and what we’re finding is more corporations that are courageous enough to say, ‘Let me learn more.’”

Yet, when it comes to NIL deals, the number of high female earners is still small. For a while, white female athletes were profiting more than Black female athletes, Armstrong says, although players like NCAA basketball champion Angel Reese are changing that dynamic.

Cameron Williams was once in a class where most of the students assumed that all collegiate athletes were making significant money from NIL partnerships. She spoke up to say that, so far, the women’s basketball team hasn’t had such lucrative opportunities.

“It’s important to talk about,” Williams says. “Everyone deserves to receive profit for their NIL, no matter what sport you’re playing, no matter what gender you are.”

The local NIL collectives are aware of the discrepancy. Champions Circle expanded to all U-M varsity sports when it launched its public membership program in April, and Hail! Impact is working with all U-M teams as well.

Increasing the number of women in leadership positions may help equity stay in the consciousness of NIL collectives, too. Anna Britnell, of Champions Circle, hopes to create that pipeline by having conversations with female students about working in the NIL space as a woman.

“My goal is to provide leadership and show them that you can work in a male-dominated profession and be successful,” Britnell says.

WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?

NIL opportunities have started to hold significant sway as a recruiting tool, but some athletic departments are suffering as donors use their purchasing power in novel ways.

For decades, student-athletes weren’t allowed to make money off of endorsements, with the NCAA citing the amateur nature of collegiate sports as the rationale.

Once those deals were permitted, the game changed. Collectives are not allowed to be involved in the recruitment process, and athletic departments cannot promise specific compensation or deals in exchange for a prospective student-athlete’s commitment to their school. But coaches can discuss the NIL opportunities that are generally available to student athletes at their universities — and those opportunities are now influencing athletes’ choices about where to attend college.

“It certainly has impacted recruiting,” Chrissi Rawak says. “For us, it’s been challenging because of who we are, the resources we have, and what we offer to our student athletes. We win more than we lose in those ways. But we’re going to have to stay focused in making sure we recruit kids that value the things we value.”

Athletic departments end up in a bind because they don’t have control over the quantity or quality of the NIL opportunities available to their recruits. They’re often dependent on donors choosing to invest in local NIL collectives to increase the opportunities available to student athletes. But more donations to NIL collectives can mean that the athletic departments lose out on direct fundraising dollars themselves.

Rawak says that some of her athletic director colleagues at other schools had to pause facility projects they were fundraising for because donors diverted their money toward NIL.

“We didn’t realize that we would need individual donor money to essentially drive NIL to start,” Rawak says. “In my mind, it was and needs to be primarily businesses and business connections. But that’s not the bulk of it at this moment in time.”

“A donor who might have traditionally given to an athletic department to support programs now has more choice,” Babiak says. “Maybe they think, ‘Oh, my money might be better spent to directly support and impact athletes if I donate through a collective.’ There’s tension around these resource shifts, for sure.”

Britnell says the situation requires learning “how to survive together.” She points to Champions Circle’s launch event in New York, which entailed partnering with the U-M Alumni Association to bring several New York-based donors to the kickoff. Or when Champions Circle student-athletes played at some local alumni groups’ golf tournaments in the past.

“It’s one pie of money, and now there’s a new person taking a slice,” Britnell says. “So what does that look like? Nobody knows yet, but ultimately, we’re all for the same mission: How do we attract the best to U-M?”