UConn alum and social media influencer Marc D’Amelio announces creation of D’Amelio Huskies Collective to help build student-athletes brands

UConn alum and social media star Marc D’Amelio announced the creation of the D’Amelio Huskies Collective on social media Friday.

The collective is a unique name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunity for UConn athletes. At least one athlete from each men’s and women’s sports at UConn will get the chance to be a part of it.

Student-athletes will submit their information such as age, grade, sport, position and interests on the website. After a student-athlete is picked, D’Amelio would be a personal mentor to them in helping athletes create their own personal brand and advising them on brand deals.

D’Amelio has expertise in this area with over 600k Twitter followers. He has also helped his daughters, Charli and Dixie who have a combined 190 million TikTok followers, in choosing the right brand deals.

“The first understanding is that social media and your personal brand is the utmost important thing for everyone,” he told the Courant. “It’s going to shape their future and help with their success throughout their career.”

Based on their interests, D’Amelio will match the student-athletes with companies with similar interests for brand deals. D’Amelio started his career in the sports-licensing business and is currently a partner with Mitchell & Ness.

“I want to be involved in helping students create good content,” he said. “I want to help students to sign good brand deals.”

One of the biggest things D’Amelio wants to ensure is that kids don’t get taken advantage of when signing brand deals.

“It’s the same thing we do with my kids,” he said. “We look at the deal and they say are going to pay us ‘X’ amount of money. A lot of times, people get excited about the top-line number, but they need to know what their contract is and what responsibility they are going to have after they sign this deal.”

For example, if an athlete signed a deal with a soda company for $500 but had to do 10 TikToks, D’Amelio would advise them not to take the deal.

He also hopes to help the athletes with the process of getting verified on all social media platforms.

Currently, D’Amelio has contacted multiple brands that are interested in working with the collective. Some of these companies include a video-editing app called Lightricks, and Step, a banking platform for teens. D’Amelio believes he can raise between $250,000-500,000 from the companies that have committed to the collective.

As for D’Amelio, he said he will take no profit from the collective.

“I feel like so much of the things I have in my life, either directly or indirectly have come from UConn,” he said. “I’ve always had a love for the university.”

D’Amelio said he has been in constant contact with UConn about the idea, and the school has given him the blessing to make the collective. D’Amelio is making sure the collective is NCAA compliant throughout the entire process.

“This isn’t about someone else’s money and diverting it to a student-athlete,” he said. “It’s about using the name and likeness to help generate revenue for them.”

D’Amelio said he believess it the collective will pay dividends in the long run for the student-athletes.

“When my kids post something and company calls and go, ‘Man, that was such an incredible post and we got so much response on that,’ it’s going to be so much more effective in building student-athletes self-esteem and understanding on how to work with companies,” D’Amelio said, “It’s really going to be a lot better than, “Hey man, here’s a bag full of money.’ That’s not what I am into.”

The Courant reached out to UConn for comment on the collective on Friday afternoon, but didn’t get a response.

Shreyas Laddha can be reached at sladdha@courant.com or @shre98 on Twitter.