‘SHE HAS IT ALL’
Here’s how Paige Bueckers could become a high-paid NCAA star
Paige Bueckers traveled from Minnesota to Connecticut with a headwind of hype as the nation’s best high school basketball player. There were magazine covers, appearances with NBA players, and so many awards.
With it all, there was the brand shaped by her social media presence — tweets and retweets, tens of thousands of likes on Instagram posts from those as wellknown as music star Drake, TikTok videos viewed by fans across the country.
In an era of empowerment among college athletes, Bueckers happens to be the face of her sport. The best player in the country playing on the most famous program in basketball, marketable and engaging, and famous beyond the Big East basketball gyms.
In the era of name, image and likeness (NIL), Bueckers is a breakout star.
“She has it all,” said Stephanie Stabulis, a social media influencer marketing strategist. “She get the visibility at UConn. She’s getting that lift from her program. She has the ability on the court … and her social presence. She has an audience. It’s all there.”
How college sports will navigate NIL rules remains to be seen. There is state and federal legislation moving forward while the NCAA has proposed rules. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy co-sponsored a bill in February that would allow college athletes to, among other things, secure representation and group licensing deals.
How athletes will be allowed to monetize their image will likely be decided later this year and rules could vary from state to state.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the NCAA’s appeal of district court’s ruling that the organization violates antitrust laws by limiting compensation for student-athletes. The case does not directly speak to the NIL rules, but the result could impact the NCAA’s role in drafting just how the new structure will operate.
Eight states have passed NIL legislation: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, and New Jersey. The bills in in Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi become law on July 1, and experts believe the NCAA and the federal government are motivated to have a national plan in place by that date.
One thing is clear: NIL is coming soon. And athletes such as Bueckers will benefit.
“Athletes are getting a lot more power through their personal branding,” said Thilo Kunkel, director of the Sport Industry Research Center and associate professor at Temple University’s School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management. “And they can use it really to their advantage.”
A report by the sports marketing platform Opendorse, which is consulting schools and athletes on NIL and social media sponsorship, found that Bueckers has the most combined Twitter and Instagram followers among players on Elite Eight teams in the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments.
Opendorse estimated annual earnings based on engagement, athletic department revenue, overall sponsorship, and market size. Sam Weber, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing for Opendorse, said the company used data from nearly a decade of managing professional athletes and sponsorships, applying the metrics to college athletes with social media platforms.
So the projections are based on data, Weber said. According to the report, Bueckers tallied over 730,000 combined followers with estimated earnings of $382,000 per year. Louisville basketball player Hailey Van Lith had fewer followers (696,000) but a higher earning potential ($965,000) based on a larger market and a more prosperous athletic department.
“Louisville has one of the highest sponsorship revenue-producing athletic departments in the country,” Weber said. “That’s definitely a factor.”
Still, the Bueckers Brand is only growing — 45,000 followers on Twitter, 758,000 on Instagram, 258,000 on TikTok as of Thursday. And while UConn does not have the sponsorship revenue of a Power Five school or the location of a large market, there is the Geno Auriemma factor. Bueckers is playing for an 11-time national champion, perhaps the most famous program in college basketball.
What does it mean for UConn if Bueckers is raking in close to $400,000 a year as a social media influencer? Well, start with less urgency to leave Storrs.
The WNBA does not allow players to enter the draft until they are at least 22, have completed college eligibility or are four years removed from high school. But the players’ union has proposed loosening the eligibility rules to mirror the NBA’s structure, which allows players to leave college after one year.
With the potential to earn money through sponsorships and endorsement as a professional, a player may be tempted to leave early if the WNBA altered its draft rules. But Bueckers — who could stay at UConn for five years, given the NCAA’s decision to grant players an extra year because of disruption of the pandemic this year — may have no financial incentive to leave.
“I’m a believer in living in the now and right now I don’t have that choice,” Bueckers said. “I’m focused on college right now. In the future, I feel like that option for future college students might be there.”
Sue Bird, UConn Class of 2002, said the era of the NIL changes the landscape.
“What’s interesting … is the whole name and likeness thing as it pertains to college,” Bird said. “Because let’s be honest, like, D [she turned to former UConn teammate Diana Taurasi], would you have come out early? I don’t know. We were on ESPN all the time. We were getting all kinds of love and popularity from it. So there was a gain there.
“Imagine if you could have made money from the name and likeness at the same moment? Like, maybe it’s the best of both worlds.”
All that exposure Bird and Taurasi received two decades ago? The lights are brighter for Bueckers and her teammates. When uberprospect Azzi Fudd joins UConn next season, the Huskies will be a star-studded team that will challenge for national titles year after year.
Bueckers, with a social media profile built to match her basketball stardom, will be a sponsor’s dream. Playing for UConn with games on ESPN during the season and a seat at the big table during the NCAA Tournament, Bueckers will watch her celebrity grow as she solidifies her place as an elite player.
“It’s important to remember that in athletics and in sports, the No. 1 driver of marketability or influence or whatever you want to call it, is still going to be your athletic performance,” Weber said. “There’s a reason why LeBron is the most likeable player in the NBA or Pat Mahomes is the most marketable player in the NFL. That’s not going away with the social media generation. The best way to build your brand is still going to be to perform on the court or on the field. Paige has that.”
Bueckers, the first freshman to earn Associated Press national player of the year, will drive her brand with performance. That much we know.
But how will she monetize that brand? It could be as simple as product placement in social media posts. Bueckers’ social media following is a wide swath of consumers, from Gen Z
peers to basketball fans of all ages.
Companies looking to target a specific audience — basketball fans, teenagers and college students, UConn watchers in Connecticut — will see an ideal vehicle in Bueckers.
“Universities have profited by restricting access to their athletes for decades and they will face strong competition from athletes that are able to reach an audience that sponsors are interested in,” Kunkel said. “Oftentimes it’s cheaper to pay one athlete to do a shoutout than to go through the athletic department and it’s most of the time more direct. There’s a lot of opportunities for athletes to benefit off the brand that the athletic programs have benefitted off for decades.”
Kunkel recently authored a study that showed female athletes have a higher earning potential than male athletes. The study also showed athletes from all sports — not just revenuedrivers football and men’s basketball — could generate some form of an income.
The findings counter the NCAA’s argument that athletes in non-revenue sports will suffer under the NIL era.
“And one of the other key arguments of the NCAA is that it’s always about the value of the university,” Kunkel said. “People are going to follow because of the university and the value is not within any one athlete. Our research really shows that there is such a vast difference between athletes at different universities, it shows that the name, image, and likeness value lies with the actual athlete, particularly within social media and online context.”
Bueckers is not unlike others in her generation, engaging on various social media platforms. Teenager influencers rise from all over the country, some with discernible skills and others with simply an ability to hold an audience.
“She is part of generation that’s coming into school right now, they’ve grown up as social media natives and they’ve seen people who are two, three, four, five years older than them, who might not be athletes, but they’ve been influencers,” Weber said. “So they come into college with these hypervaluable brands. And I think we’re only going to see more in the NIL era. Right now Paige is an outlier. But I don’t think the (online) activity that she has is not going to be an outlier for long.”
Said Stabulis, “You’re taking a generation that wants to be content creators and you’re taking a restriction off … I think two worlds merge. The sky is the limit. All of these new opportunities will be open to these athletes. The floodgates are opening. It’s exciting.”
Bueckers, of course, has a unique story. She was the best high school basketball player in the country last year and she’s the best in college this year.
And she took her skills to a program with 11 national title banners hanging in its home. Auriemma, UConn coach since 1985, has talked about adjusting to the most recent generation of players. He joked before the season that Bueckers was “famous for being famous” and he razzed her with the nickname “Paige Kardashian.”
And it’s worth noting that UConn restricts players
from tweeting during the season, although Instagram and TikTok are not off limits. Bueckers’ last Instagram post on March 9 garnered more than 221,000 likes.
Weber said most schools around the country are preparing to embrace NIL. But many schools are waiting to see what the legislation will look like and how it will apply.
Auriemma does believe players should have the ability to enter the WNBA early. But he also says programs and the sport have been built by retaining players for four years.
Where does he stand on NIL?
“Should they be able to benefit? Well, that’s coming, right? That’s what the NIL is, that these kids are going to be able to benefit from what they do,” Auriemma said. “Which is going to cause a whole other sort of issues. When you go recruit a kid now it’s [going to be] … ‘Hi coach, this is my agent. So tell me what I’m getting.’
“Well, you’re going to get books, dorm, you get food and you get this and you get that, and, oh, by the way, here’s what you can make at our school if you’re any good. And now every school, unless there are some kind of guidelines, every school, depending on where you are, is going to be able to offer a kid something different, maybe.
“So now you become professional sports where all the best free agents all go to the same teams. But that doesn’t change my mind that kids should have a choice and kids should be able to be compensated.”