Opendorse: NCAA Athletes could earn $1.5B in NIL's first year

Opendorse CEO Blake Lawrence breaks down some of the key statistics Opendorse collected during the first month NCAA athletes could profit off their name, image and likeness.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: College football getting underway this Saturday. Can you believe it? I can't believe we're already at the end of August. Well NCAA athletes starting to cash in on their name, image, and likeness, with one athlete already earning more than $200,000. Let's talk about all this with Blake Lawrence. He's the CEO of Opendorse. And Blake, this new rule has only been in effect for, what, just around a month or so? What are some of the trends that you're seeing? What is the data telling you?

BLAKE LAWRENCE: The data is telling us that brands and fans are eager and willing to pay student athletes at a clip much higher than we expected. At Opendorse, we've been providing technology to the athlete endorsement space since 2012, tracking the trends in professional athlete endorsements, understanding who's getting paid, how much they're getting paid. And in the college space, we predicted that the first year might be around $750 million spent on student athletes and NIL.

In the first couple months here in the first month's data, it's showing that the market could be larger than $1 and 1/2 billion spent on student athlete endorsements and name, image, and likeness opportunities. So there's a tremendous opportunity for student athletes today. And the trends are exciting to see so many brands and fans leaning in to support student athletes directly.

- Has most of this been driven by deals with football players? Or are the other athletes taking part in it? And if it is just football players, what happens when we bring in basketball?

BLAKE LAWRENCE: Certainly, right now with football season just a few days away, there's a lot of spending on college football players, about 80% of all the dollars in the the first month of NIL went to college football players. Now a lot of these are being pushed around the different sports that the national advertisers are spending across the entire spectrum of sports. But you're seeing a lot of local businesses getting creative and supporting their favorite football players, getting excitement around the football season.

So there's a lot of spin there. There will be more spend across other sports as those sports go live. Interesting enough, women's volleyball was the third most revenue generating sport in terms of NIL compensation in the first month. And women's volleyball also starts this week.

SEANA SMITH: Interesting. I don't think a lot of people would have guessed that women's volleyball would be the third most popular, at least right now. Blake, how are people, the athletes that have been successful, doing this? I guess, where are they seeing the most success? Is it through social media? Is it more so their traditional advertisement route? I guess, what are you seeing there?

BLAKE LAWRENCE: Well one thing that sports fans need to know, these aren't your granddaddy's endorsements. This is an entirely new world of athlete endorsements. Social media is the leading factor in student athletes earning compensation from brands or fans. That's about 50% of all revenue is coming from social media. Licensing, so signing their rights away to allow somebody to create apparel, or trading cards, or other types of merchandise using their NIL rights is another leading factor.

So 75% of the opportunities for student athletes are coming through passive opportunities, posting on social media, signing licensing agreements. So those that are worried that student athletes will be distracted with NIL actually should be surprised or excited to know that athletes are monetizing with a few clicks or a signature. So they can stay focused on all those other things like school and sports.

- When you talk about how they saw, they stay focused on other things, how do these deals work? Do the advertisers reach out to the athletes or to their representatives? Are the athletes reaching out to the potential sponsors? What does it look like on the ground?

BLAKE LAWRENCE: Yeah. Certainly. In the professional athlete endorsement space, it's 99% agent driven. The majority of professional athletes have an agent that represents them. And they handle all their off the field affairs. Now in the college athlete endorsement space, it's 99% app driven. So these businesses, brands, fans are connecting with athletes through direct messages on social media or through platforms like Opendorse. Opendorse is a marketplace where 50,000 plus athletes have signed up, made themselves available for brands or fans to reach out, contact them, pitch them, pay them, handle even tax preparation.

So this is a very simple way for athletes to understand their value, monetize their value from perhaps to professional athletes. And right now, student athletes are using this tool at a high clip because it handles everything for them.

SEANA SMITH: So Blake, we have college football getting underway this weekend. I guess, how noticeable, how visible is this branding going to be to the average viewer? Are you going to see-- I guess, what can we expect going forward? Is it going to be something different here for the viewers this time around?

BLAKE LAWRENCE: Certainly. I think that you might be surprised to see a Dr. Pepper commercial where the quarterback from Clemson is the star performer. And the commercial that's a national advertising campaign. National advertisers like Degree deodorant are using Opendorse to team up with athletes around the country to do some things this fall. You've got advertisers like Gopuff that is offering an endorsement deal to every student athlete at every level the NCAA right now.

And so you might see more athletes promoting more products on social media than you expected. But once the games start, you won't realize that these athletes are endorsing or promoting products. Most of the school rules and state laws don't allow student athletes to actively participate in NIL activities during official team activity. So you won't see athletes promoting during their halftime interview or postgame presser. Most of those things are disallowed by either state law or school policy.

So you wouldn't recognize it in the games. But once you visit your social media feed and see a student athlete hawk a local product or local business, go and support that local product or business. Because that's directly supporting those student athletes that show up in your feed and show up on Saturday on the football field.