Terms like “social media influencer” and “brand ambassador” may baffle most adults over a certain age. Not so for teens, who grew up consuming social media and even seeing some of their same-age peers profiting from it. Social media personality Charli D’Amelio, for example, amassed a $23 million fortune as a top TikTok creator before turning 20 via deals with Prada, Amazon, and other brands.
So perhaps it was only a matter of time before high school athletes were able to profit from their name, image, and likeness, or NIL, via marketing contracts—the vast majority of which involve promoting brands on social media.
The details of NIL policies vary from state to state, but they all present unprecedented concerns and opportunities for young athletes, according to experts like Joshua Scott, the associate executive director of Missouri Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, who perceives NIL at the high school level as a “catch-22” scenario.
“We’re looking at protecting the students. We’re looking at them having the best experience that they can,” said Scott, who’s also the athletic and activities director for the Springfield, Mo., school district. “We want them [student-athletes] to be able to benefit where they can, while also just not taking what is special away from high school athletics and activities.”
In this quickly evolving landscape in which high school athletes in most states can now cash in on their athletic reputation, or at least aspire to, school administrators have plenty of questions. Education Week breaks down the brief history of NIL, what an NIL deal means for high school recipients, and how schools can prepare for the possible perils and opportunities surrounding this new reality.
The quickly evolving history of NIL
Perhaps the single defining characteristic of NIL policies is how rapidly they’re changing, say administrators tasked with staying on top of their latest iteration.
“I think we are where most states are, which is trying to be as proactive as we can while trying to predict what’s going to happen next,” said Missouri’s Scott, who said his state just finished amending language in the bylaws to allow students to receive benefits for their name, image, or likeness if the promotions do not represent a member school or use a school’s name or marks.
“It’s one of those things where everything you write down is almost outdated by the time it’s printed,” he said.
Less than a decade ago, NIL deals had not come to college campuses yet, and certainly not high schools. California in 2019 became the first state to permit college athletes to be compensated for their name, image, and likeness when lawmakers passed legislation “prohibiting schools from punishing athletes who accept endorsement money while in college.” Officials with the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which governs college sports, initially balked, suggesting that such policies presented an “existential threat” to college sports.
Fast forward just five years. Not only can all college athletes in the nation legally profit from their fame via NIL deals, but the NCAA in April voted to allow colleges to assist student-athletes in finding and coordinating NIL agreements with third parties. In the meantime, NIL policies have been trickling down to the high school level.
In the next couple of years, I'm assuming that athletic administrators like me will have to become more well-versed in how to support kids in this.
California, during the 2021-22 school year, became the first state to permit high school athletes to ink NIL deals. This past July, Florida became the latest state to approve a policy allowing high school students to enter into NIL agreements.
Now, at least 39 states and Washington, D.C. have similar policies on the books, according to the BusinessofCollegeSports.com.
How profitable and prevalent are NIL deals for high school students?
The vast majority of high school athletes who enter into NIL deals will not get rich from them, say experts, who put the percentage of high school athletes signing lucrative NIL deals at less than 1 percent of the nearly 8 million high school student-athletes in the nation.
Tod Morgan, who oversees a NIL committee as part of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association, estimates that the average worth of an NIL deal for high school athletes runs between $60 to $120 and requires a three- to four-hour time commitment.
“There’s not been a groundswell or significant number or size of these NIL deals,” said Brent Richard, the CEO of IMG Academy, a boarding school and sports training destination in Bradenton, Fla.
Then there are those states that simply won’t allow high school students to profit heavily from NIL, at least for now. For instance, the Illinois High School Association’s handbook states that high school athletes’ earnings from NIL deals cannot exceed $75.
There are exceptions, however. Among college and high school student-athletes who have secured NIL deals, three of the top five (ranked by valuation) were high schoolers, according to a website that tracks this information.
Bronny James, the son of LeBron James, valued at $5.1 million; Mikey Williams, another high school basketball player who played in San Diego as well as North Carolina, valued at $2.6 million; and Arch Manning, a high school football player and member of the Manning family football dynasty (he’s the oldest son of Cooper Manning and nephew of Peyton and Eli), , valued at $1.6 million.
School leaders express concerns over NIL deals
Since the inception of NIL deals at the high school level, many educators have resisted the concept.
“What we’re trying to protect is the role of the student-athlete with that high school jersey on, and everything that that jersey means,” Karissa Niehoff, the executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations, which develops rules of competition for most high school sports across the country, said in a 2021 interview with the Washington Post.“[T]hey are part of a school where students are embraced for being who they are, they are part of a growing and learning experience. They are not part of an athletic endeavor that is about sponsorships and payments or anything like that.”
Four years later, as NIL policies have penetrated the majority of states’ public high schools, athletic administrators continue to grapple with similar concerns.
“As more of these items pop up to benefit the individual, it becomes harder and harder for us to keep that focus [for student-athletes] on being a part of something bigger than you,” said Scott, of the Missouri Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.
School administrators and athletic directors have a steep learning curve with NIL
It’s easy to see how administrators consider NIL, from the granular details of associated policies to the big-picture challenges it presents, as just one more headache to contend with.
“A lot of them [administrators] are too nervous to think about how NIL can be applied to education. They don’t understand it. They have too much going on. I often feel like an interpreter,” said Scott Grant, president of Triple Threat Leadership, LLC, a consulting agency that educates school districts on NIL policies and related issues.
Grant says the best thing school and district leaders can do is educate themselves on related policies and even consider how they might integrate lessons on NIL into the curricula. He encourages administrators to engage sooner rather than later in strategic discussions on how NIL fits within their school mission and educational programming—before they’re forced to react to real-time NIL situations that involve their students.
For instance, there are practical questions that student-athletes directly involved in NIL deals need to be aware of, explains Missouri’s Scott, like: Are you noting on your social media post that this is a paid advertisement? Are you following the tax rules?
“There’s a bunch of new learning opportunities we have to grasp and try to support our kids the best we can,” Scott said.
Beyond practical and legal questions, schools need to be asking students more philosophical questions, said IMG Academy’s Richard.
“Social media is not necessarily great for high school kids,” he said. “Fundamentally, this is about your personal image, your personal brand, and it’s about making decisions as a young person about who or which brands you want to attach yourself to.”
At IMG, Richard said, educators know to ask student-athletes tough questions that support character development, like: How do you decide which brand to attach yourself to before you know who you are and what you stand for?
NIL’s growing pervasiveness at the high school level, and the heavy influence of social media on teens in general, mean that all high school students, not just those aspiring to NIL deals, can benefit from contemplating NIL-related questions in the classroom—whether they’re embedded in lessons about ethics, financial literacy, marketing, or business.
Scott sees the learning opportunities, and related obligations on the part of schools, only increasing. He points to large universities with huge investments in athletics that have begun hiring employees and even creating departments to manage NIL-related issues.
“It’s starting to happen right now in colleges and universities,” Scott said. “In the next couple of years, I’m assuming that athletic administrators like me will have to become more well-versed in how to support kids in this.”
