Why UConn’s Paige Bueckers could see biggest pay day from NCAA’s new rules
HARTFORD, Conn. — As Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont weighed last month whether to sign legislation to let college athletes in the state sign endorsement deals, a surprising billboard appeared along I-84 in Bristol.
“America’s highest paid college athlete plays in Connecticut,” announced the sign, paid for by a Canadian-based company called Six Star Pro Nutrition. “We just can’t pay her yet.”
As any sports fan surely recognized, the billboard referred to Paige Bueckers, the UConn point guard whose unique mix of talent, moxie and social media popularity make her a national face of the seismic change coming to college sports. With the NCAA having declared — in response to legislation in Connecticut and about two dozen other states — that college athletes may profit off their names, images and likenesses, Bueckers could be ideally positioned to cash in.
“In terms of an athlete you could build a 360-degree universal integrated [marketing] campaign around, being the star player at the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball program is a pretty nice position to be in,” said Jake Duhaime, consumer communications lead at Iovate Health Sciences, the parent company of Six Star Pro Nutrition. “And then you throw in the fact that those athletes are going to stay for four years and said athlete in question is just a sophomore, you could get really creative over the next three years with someone like that.”
Other brands likely agree. Industry analysts rank Bueckers among the college athletes with the largest earning potential, likely to fetch hundreds of thousands in annual endorsement income.
UConn’s name, image and likeness (or NIL) policy officially takes effect on July 12, after which Bueckers and other Huskies athletes can promote products, sign endorsement deals, profit off ad revenue on social media accounts and more.
For some athletes, that might mean a few hundred bucks to sign autographs at a local business or wear a certain mouth guard during football games.
For Bueckers and other superelite athletes like her, it will mean much, much more.
Bueckers, the reigning Naismith College Player of the Year, hasn’t said what kind of endorsement deals she might pursue or how aggressive she’ll be in maximizing NIL opportunities. But a windfall awaits her if she wants it.
As of Wednesday, the UConn sophomore had 829,000 followers on Instagram, plus 335,000 on TikTok and another 51,000 on Twitter, making her one of the most followed athletes, male or female, in American college sports. If she’s willing to pitch products on her social media accounts, that alone could net her tens of thousands of dollars.
An analysis conducted in March by Opendorse, a company that helps facilitate endorsement deals between athletes and brands, concluded that Bueckers’ following could be worth $382,000 annually, the most of any player in the Elite Eight of the men’s or women’s NCAA Tournament. Darren Rovell of Action Network recently ranked Bueckers sixth on a list of college athletes with the most to gain from NIL rights.