Much of the discourse surrounding name image and likeness compensation is painted in a negative light with cautionary tales and sky-is-falling anxiety about the broad direction of college sports. There’s the ever-evolving debate of pay for play, or how it’s used as an inducement for visits or commitments, but there are also the regular transactions that show the system can work as a normal exchange of services, specifically in the social media era.
Consider the Los Angeles Lakers’ 133–112 win over the Charlotte Hornets on Dec. 28. A few Michigan football players were in section 102 with prime seats to take in the action. The seats routinely retail for over $500 on the secondary market, but thanks to NIL, when Trevor Keegan requested a few tickets, UM’s Champions Circle Collective was able to make a quick deal for a few players (Zak Zinter, Cornelius Johnson and Keegan among them) to receive tickets in exchange for an Instagram story.
“We’re able to kinda get creative when we're putting together services that we perform for brands or entities in exchange for whether it's monetary compensation like cash or it's in-kind like a ticket to a game,” Jared Wangler, the co-founder of the Champions Circle collective affiliated with UM says. “Being able to leverage the student-athlete’s platform is an incredible way to put a deal together. So, usually, people think NIL, they think of a commercial or you know a Wheaties box or a T-shirt but the power of social media and essentially looking at those platforms as assets that those athletes have created are unique ways to utilize and leverage NIL.”
