The time to shine
March moments let athletes cash in on new fame via NIL
In the fall of 2021, an assistant athletic director at Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey faced a room full of college athletes and told them they would soon be able to find out what they were worth.
The conversation mirrored meetings that took place in college athletic departments across the country after the NCAA Division I Board of Directors that summer approved a new interim policy allowing college athletes to monetize their name, image and likeness, or NIL, for the first time.
NIL was being heralded as a new frontier in college sports, the Saint Peter’s assistant AD explained, and athletes needed to understand how to navigate it while following NCAA policy and state law.
Doug Edert, then a junior guard on the Peacocks men’s basketball team, sat in the audience, listening with skepticism.
“They were explaining it, and in my head I’m like, ‘Nobody’s ever gonna buy anything of mine or anything. I don’t have to worry about this stuff like starting your own brand,’ ” Edert said. “I had no interest. I just kind of let it brush off my shoulder.”
Mere months later, Edert and his mustachioed mug became the face of March Madness as he and Saint Peter’s became the first No. 15 seed in NCAA Tournament history to advance to the Elite Eight.
Edert, who averaged 11.3 points in four NCAA Tournament games, was catapulted into the spotlight and like many before him became an overnight cult hero. Unlike those before him, Edert leveraged his newfound fame into partnerships with companies including Buffalo Wild Wings, and he cultivated a person
al brand valued in excess of $120,000, according to On3 NIL Valuation.
The NCAA Tournament has long held the power to elevate breakout teams and players into our national consciousness. Now, the combination of NIL and the NCAA’s one-time transfer rule, which was ratified in April 2021, two months before the NIL policy, can make the tournament’s brightest stars shine even brighter.
Entering the second March Madness of this new era, members of Cinderella teams might find their metaphorical glass slipper replaced by a diamond-encrusted shoe.
As brands and athletes alike adapt, Sam Weber, marketing director for the NIL marketplace company Opendorse, said college basketball players are primed for even greater benefits this postseason.
“For 99 percent of them who won’t play in the NBA or WNBA, and even the ones who will play in the WNBA, this could be the peak of their marketability,” Weber said. “But if I’m that athlete with pre-existing brand relationships, I’m reaching out to those brands and saying, ‘Hey, what can we do while I’m on this big stage, whether that’s one round or four?’ There’s huge high-value opportunities — whether it’s live events, social media posts or what have you — to really get involved and take advantage of the moment.”
Millions to be made?
Edert had just played in the biggest game of his life, scoring 20 points as Saint Peter’s knocked off No. 2 seed Kentucky in the first round of the Tournament. And as expected, his phone was blowing up.
But it wasn’t just friends and family reaching out to congratulate him or fans and reporters tagging him on social media. Edert’s Instagram messages were flooded with requests from companies that wanted to cash in and help him do the same.
Edert played basketball for a small private Jesuit university. He didn’t have a business manager or an agent. As the Peacocks continued to pull off subsequent upsets and Edert’s social media following grew exponentially, he dispatched his father and other family members to handle incoming messages.
The first to reach out was Buffalo Wild Wings. Edert struck an NIL deal with the restaurant chain mid-tournament and published his first sponsored Instagram post before the Peacocks’ Sweet 16 win over Purdue.
“Everything was crazy,” said Edert, who now plays basketball for Bryant University. “It was really unreal. Now, looking back at it, I can kind of see it clearer than when you’re in the moment. Because when you’re in the moment, I’m like on cloud nine, but I have no idea what’s going on.”
Fifteen minutes of fame is no longer fleeting. It can translate to brand sponsorships and product endorsements, some with the ability to last beyond an athlete’s college eligibility.
How much money is up for grabs in these deals? It’s hard to know for sure, said Casey Floyd, co-founder of NIL platform NOCAP Sports.
The NCAA’s interim NIL policy is intended to be temporary until Congress passes federal legislation. It stipulates that colleges can require student-athletes to report NIL deals (in some states, like Texas, the law requires it) but cannot dictate how athletes utilize compensation for those deals. But because colleges are reliant on athletes to self-report agreements, there’s no way to be certain every NIL dollar is accounted for (and many likely are not).
Former Oregon forward Sedona Prince, for example, said her first brand deal made with Parity, a sports marketing company with the mission of closing the gender pay gap, was worth $100,000. She also told the Chronicle that she and most college athletes she knew did not disclose all of their NIL income to their universities, whether because of time constraints or general oversight.
The baseline earnings figures that are available can vary drastically.
“It could be a couple thousand to low or high tens of thousands of dollars, and I think there’s like two different buckets,” Floyd said. “But really, what I’ve seen since getting into the marketing industry in the last, you know, three years is brands don’t care what sport you are, what division you play in. They really care about the number of followers and the engagement rate. The brands that really want a return on investment, that’s what they care about.”
More eyeballs are on college basketball during the NCAA Tournament, which Weber said means it is safe to assume players can get paid more per activity during the postseason than during the regular season.
Athletes are not, however, permitted to promote their NIL partnerships or availability at practices, games, team-related press conferences or on-court celebrations. During the breakneck pace of the NCAA Tournament, when teams have as little as one day off between games, it can be difficult for players to find time to capitalize on interest from brands.
“You’re 100 percent focused on basketball, and you’re not caring about outside factors, but at the same time, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Edert said. “So you have to capitalize but also maintain laser focus on game plans and getting more wins. So (Buffalo Wild Wings) contacted me on Instagram DMs, and I just took it from there and did a deal with them and then went right back to work and locking in on practices and future games.”
As the Tournament progresses and attention refocuses on the surviving teams, it’s reasonable to assume momentum for potential NIL deals increases. So if your team gets knocked out in the early rounds, are you simultaneously knocked out of the running for the most lucrative brand partnerships? Or if your team makes a deep run, are you more likely to cash in on the exposure?
“It’s certainly helpful,” Weber said. “The No. 1 indicator of your marketability is your performance on the court or field or wherever you compete. I think the more exposure you have, the longer you are successful, the more brands you are exposed to and also the more value you can deliver to those brands that are partnering with you.”
That isn’t to say that members of the 32 teams eliminated during the first round hold no marketing value. Athletes on those teams can still command a significant audience and, once out of the tournament, have more free time in their schedules to commit to brands seeking longterm relationships.
Additionally, even oneoff deals made during the tournament can continue to command publicity long after “One Shining Moment” is over.
“I think maybe an overlooked part of NIL so far for both brands and athletes is the earned media value that these campaigns received,” Weber said. “If you think about how many national stories Doug Edert and his brand partners were in last March, I would guess that the media value probably far exceeded the social media value of the posts that Doug put out.”
Edert’s Buffalo Wild Wings deal was a shortterm one. But he has ongoing partnerships with Cameo, Volo Sports and Barstool Sports that have continued even though he is now playing at Bryant.
The explosion of popularity from Edert’s time with the Peacocks had a lasting effect not just on his finances but on his impact in the basketball community.
“It’s awesome,” Edert said. “The whole thing with my mustache was kind of the main thing for my publicity and NIL stuff, which I found hilarious. And still today, people do recognize who I am and take pictures and get autographs and stuff. So I just love how me doing what I love to do, which is play basketball, is inspiring others, especially the younger generations. That means the world to me.”
And yes, he still has the ‘stache.
Freedom of movement
Edert had never had an NIL opportunity prior to the NCAA Tournament. Neither had Lauren Jensen, the guard who stepped into the national spotlight when her goahead shot knocked out her former Iowa team and advanced Creighton to last year’s Sweet 16.
Jensen said she also received more attention from brands immediately after March Madness, but not to the level Edert experienced. That is partly because the women’s tournament historically has not been marketed as well as the men’s and partly because Jensen did not prioritize capitalizing on her NIL. Her Instagram account remains private, and other than one deal with a local artist in Omaha, Neb., who painted her iconic shot, she has not engaged much with businesses or brands.
“There was a little bit of some opportunities that presented themselves after. Honestly, not a ton, though,” Jensen said. “I feel like being at Creighton, it’s a bit of a smaller market, so it’s more like local stuff. And so I had like a couple of that, but I feel like in terms of NIL, we’re still kind of figuring out the best way to go about it and kind of get some of those deals.”
But Jensen and Edert both benefited from another recent NCAA rule change that allows athletes in any sport to transfer to another school one time without penalty.
Jensen played her freshman season at Iowa and went with the Hawkeyes on a run to the Sweet 16, but she decided to transfer after the season in search of more consistent playing time. Prior to April 2021, athletes in five sports including men’s and women’s basketball were required to sit out a season after transferring or to obtain a waiver from their previous school in order to play immediately at their new school.
But under the new onetime transfer policy, Jensen was immediately eligible to play at Creighton for the 2021-22 season. She started all but one regular-season game and then in the NCAA Tournament led the 10th-seeded Bluejays to the program’s first Elite Eight, including a second-round upset of the third-seeded Hawkeyes on national television.
It was a storybook moment tailor-made for March Madness — and one that wouldn’t have been possible without the transfer rule change.
If Jensen had been required to sit out after transferring, she said she would have given more serious consideration to staying another season at Iowa. Instead, she was one of more than 1,100 women’s basket
ball players and 1,700 men’s basketball players who entered the transfer portal in the first offseason following the rule change, which, together with NIL, has given college athletes more free agency than ever before.
“It definitely changes the landscape a bit,” Jensen said. “It’s given the ability for athletes to choose when they want to go and if they want to make a change — and not necessarily feeling like they’re stuck in a place where they don’t really fit or don’t necessarily want to be, and I think that’s a good thing. I also think the NIL component of it also gives athletes more freedom in that sense. But I feel like for NIL, we will see the implications of that later down the road. Whereas right now, the transfer portal, you can see a little bit more of the immediate impact.”
Changes still to come
As another go-round of March Madness approaches, experts expect circumstances to be different.
Because the 2022 NCAA Tournaments were the first iterations in the NIL era, there was a lot of uncertainty from the perspectives of universities, athletes and brands.
“At the macro level last year, there was a huge amount of excitement and interest on all sides that was paired with — maybe dangerous isn’t the word, but an unsettling lack of understanding of what you could and couldn’t do,” Weber said, “as far as what both the NCAA’s policy and individual school policy said on what and when athletes could participate in these deals. So just generally speaking, there was a fair amount of confusion going into it, but that didn’t tamper down the interest from national brands.”
Going into this year’s tournaments, companies have made adjustments and are applying a fullcourt press.
Floyd said some brands NOCAP Sports works with began planning content for March Madness 2023 as early as December. As a result, college basketball players stand to make even more money if they find themselves on the sport’s biggest stage.
“There’s gonna be a lot more money than last year. I know that for sure,” Floyd said. “A lot more deals. People have time to plan this year, and they’re ready. I know from just firsthand knowledge, because of our company, that there are a lot of big brands that are involved in doing some campaigns, and they have big budgets. … I think this March Madness and moving forward, it’s a whole new world we’ll live in, because now the brands are starting to realize college athletes are amazing influencers.”
A typical social media influencer, Floyd said, has an engagement rate between 1 and 2 percent — the portion of a person’s followers that share, like or comment on their posts. College athletes average an engagement rate of about 20 percent. That’s an enormous bang for your buck if you’re a company looking for exposure.
In the grand scheme of the NIL landscape, many deals are hyper local, made between athletes and inmarket businesses. Star Pizza teams up with University of Houston basketball stars Marcus Sasser and Tramon Mark. A Texas A&M apparel company pays Aggie athletes to sign autographs for fans at the company’s store. Boosterfunded collectives often help broker deals, too, since universities are not allowed to facilitate such connections.
Last year during March Madness, though, Weber said participation on a local or small business level was minimal. Maybe they weren’t as informed or didn’t have the funds that national brands did to approach athletes during the tournaments. This year, Weber expects local businesses to be more in the mix for campaigns alongside national ones.
Sports consultant Alex Sinatra co-teaches an NIL course at Texas A&M law school. One thing Sinatra tries to emphasize is that an athlete’s value is not entirely dependent on their performance.
“There are a lot of players whose NIL value, so the monetary value from their NIL, has shot through the roof because they were involved in these tournaments and maybe they weren’t the best player,” she said. “That’s OK. Your NIL value is a compilation of your on-court or on-field performance and who you are as a person off the court, the field or the pitch — who you are as a human being.”
Whereas athletes from big-name programs — the Dukes and Tennessees of the world — might enter the NCAA Tournament with large followings already, Sinatra said athletes from smaller schools have the benefit of starting with a “clean slate.”
“People might not know who you are, so you can kind of reinvent yourself if you want,” Sinatra said. “You have the opportunity to really showcase who you are as a person at these tournaments. Yes, your athletic ability is on display. But you also have the ability to show the morethan-an-athlete side of your life as well, and a lot of times, brands and consumers connect with that sometimes more than how good of an athlete you are.”
For people like Edert and Jensen, March Madness might represent the first time they take advantage of their marketability. But even athletes who have done NIL deals before can still get a huge bump in March, Floyd said.
“Another aspect of that is the athletes that already have NIL opportunities before the Tournament, the Tournament is just like a bonus, and it creates all this extra attention that brands really want to do deals,” he said.
Houston men’s basketball players can confirm as much. The Cougars had done some NIL deals prior to last year’s NCAA Tournament, but the biggest ones — including a sevenfigure deal from Mattress Mack — didn’t roll in until after their run to the Elite Eight.
“I feel like we got media attention (from the deep NCAA run the past two years), and we used that to build relationships with more people around the community in Houston,” Sasser said.
Cougars guard Jamal Shead added, “A lot of our NIL deals start off with sponsoring the No. 1 team in the country. Winning always helps. Winning last year and continuing to win this year has helped us tremendously. Winning always helps.”
The March Madness spotlight can even magnify non-basketball players. Indiana cheerleader Cassidy Cerny, who went viral during last year’s men’s tournament for rescuing a stuck ball from above the backboard, inked a deal with an apparel company to sell T-shirts commemorating the moment.
Weber said he urges athletes to be prepared — whether by setting up a profile on an NIL platform, appointing a middleman to handle business requests, or proactively reaching out to brands before the NCAA Tournament starts.
Prince agreed with that advice.
“No college athlete can prepare for that fully, but I think having the tools in your pocket like, ‘OK, at any moment my brand could explode. How am I going to be prepared for that? Who do I have around me for that?’ is important,” Prince said. “But yeah, I mean, you never know when that’s gonna happen. I just hope and I pray athletes are becoming more prepared, understanding that it could happen at any time — that you can have a breakout game and your entire career and life could change forever.”
As Edert said, “I was just in the right spot at the right time.”