The Goat Agency’s Post

Transcript

All right, topic for today. In NIL sports, athletes are now going to the school that can pay them the most. Essentially a whole new influencer class has risen. Is it good for sports? Is it good for marketing or both or neither? So in the long history of amateur sports, specifically college sports in the United States, athletes could not be paid. And that included both schools paying them to attend the school and be good at sports and drive profit for them. But it also meant that they could not profit off their name. Image and Likeness or NIL, meaning that they could not accept endorsement deals. So say you are a highly famous, highly successful college basketball player. College football player, right? Nike could pay you millions and millions of dollars to appear in their ads, right? To endorse their products? Except they could not. The NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association which runs all college sports in America, had a outstanding rule for years that you could not profit off their name, image and likeness. The idea being that they wanted to keep amateur athletics pure away. From the pitfalls that come with money and that these college students were being mostly rewarded with athletic scholarships, meaning they were being compensated by being able to attend these prestigious universities for free. That changed officially in 2021. There's a court case a few years earlier, Bannon versus NCAA, in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that rule that the answer really had that athletes could not profit off their name, image and likeness was unconstitutional starting on July 1st, 2020. NCAA college athletes United States can now essentially make marketing tools. They could profit off their name, image and likeness. Henson name NIL out of this has exploded the ability of college athletes to profit. And whether that is, you know, endorsement deal. Someone like Livy Dunn, who's the famous influencer slash gymnast at LSU has a massive deal with Fiori just commercials for that and she does social posts for them, right. And as a result, a lot of athletes, some coming from poor family backgrounds have been able to make money for their families even as their college athletes. All that seems very fair. Right. Even if you're an athlete, an amateur athlete, yeah, it seems fair to be able to profit off your fake, right? The school is making millions of dollars from TV deals, from selling the jersey with your name on it, selling tickets, right? Even people wanting to attend universities because you're good at your sport, right? All that seems fair. But what it's done is it has very much changed the landscape of college sports for fans. We're now what's happening is athletes are going to the school that can build up the biggest sponsorship package for them. They'll work with brands. To work with local companies, even to come up with payment schemes and this is all legal payment plans essentially for these players. So instead of going to the school, because I really like this coach or it's close to home or the academics really fit what I want to do, my post playing career athletes are now going to the school that can pay them the most, which obviously is a huge advantage for certain schools that have huge athletic budgets, are in big markets, etcetera. It also really stinks for fans because what's happening is at the same time and I came along. The ensemble made it much easier for athletes to transfer schools. So now what you're seeing is a really good players who come to play at your school for one or two years are now jumping to another school because that school is offering them a bigger NFL package. So you're seeing a lot of, you say, college football players who play four or five years of college football play for three different teams and they're constantly transferring, constantly looking to transfer. And as a result, it makes it less enjoyable as a fan because if you have this really good freshman or sophomore quarterback, you're excited to watch him for the next four years. Pins and needles when the transfer portal opens up that he's going to go to Oregon who has a huge L package via Nike and leave your school. It's been so far in theory and IL seemed very fair, right? Athletes should be able to profit off and make money off other people making money off them because they're good at sports. But it has impacted the enjoyment for fans and their college sports rooting experience. So just like a cultural thing up north, people love their professional sports. Do you think of Boston, NY? They've got story teams, professional sports. The North is huge and the South, we love college sports. And the reason we love college sports is because it's amateur, because they weren't getting paid. So there's passion behind it, right? Like they're trying to get their biggest dream ever. They have so much fight in it because they've got to make it to that professional level. And it keeps heart at the soul of sports. Then you put money in it. Well, that hearts out. We've got college students making up to 1,000,000. And just for context, like as we're filming this, it is March Madness. We're down to the Final Four. There are no Cinderella teams. None. When I used to make my bracket, my first part of it, I'd always pick a Cinderella team. And that made your bracket fun and that made March Madness madness. There is no madness this year. The top four or Final Four are all top seeds. That's not exciting. It's not fun. Been like Butler Gonzaga these smaller schools with you know 5 to 10,000 students would make these defensive turnarounds is ahead. A group of three or four seniors were played together a while were really good and they make a run of the Final four. Now those kids who are at Gonzaga and pretty good or at Butler and pretty good as sophomores are jumping ship for the first week NFL deal to these bigger schools like Florida and yeah so it's really impact again that's just like a small way where something everyone in America participates does the college basketball and Sibley bracket it's now. The shock, right, the fun, the fun of the magic of of March is gone. Exactly. So there's like it's just a heavyweight matchup. Nick Saban, arguably the greatest college football coach of all time, basically quick coaching because he was tired of dealing with. I like his. They lost a playoff game in Michigan in the Rose Bowl. And he said the next day I had 10 players coming into my office not to talk about the loss, not trying to figure out how to get better. It was all what's my NL, NL package this year? And at that moment, he said, I'm out, I'm done. I can't. You know what I mean? This is not the sport. I grew up not this morning. I want to coach you anymore. That's distraction. It's messing up your focus. Then you lose that like team cohesion because you see that in equity, right? Like you've now got people driving up with Ferraris, who was the Georgia quarterback that's now in Miami. Ohh. Carson Beck personal backyard. Yeah, no thank you. You can see the anti wheel and I wheels turning in his head of OK, I'm transferring now. Where where's my where's my biggest paycheck coming from? Absolutely. On the flip side and the world that we live in and that we love marketing. It is a very, very huge advantage. I mean, if you think about Jalen Hurts, love him, Jalen Brown, love him. I bought a pair of Converse because he had the same Converse. So they are very influential people. If we're passionate about a team or about an athlete, we are very easily influenced. So if you pull that down further into college athletes, it's even more niche because people are passionate about a college or an area or things like that. So from a marketer, you have a super hyper local reach. You can again like hone in on those demographics of. Like that sport specifically or the school of that social media following. So you can really dive deep into those demographics. And then you have that built-in fan base, the recipe of like a highly engaged audience. Yeah. And as a marketing and influencer marketing agency, it's great for us because we now have like, essentially a whole new influencer class has risen as a result, right? Because we now have all these Gen. Z, which every brand says they want to reach Gen. Gen. Z, right? We have all these famous 18 to 22. Roll 2-6 years ago we could not have partnered with because they could not take money. Now we do and as a result, you know, it's great for our clients. College sports, you know, there's sort of a sexy thing that people want to get attached to, right? You know, people know who these names are. Even people like the C-Suite who watch college sports, they know who these names are. They're excited to maybe work with some of these athletes. We've gotta bunch. We've worked with Angel Reese when she was like LSU. It it moves the needle. Absolutely. College sports is despite some of the hindrances and I had to the sport so incredibly popular and still moves the needle. And it's great for brains to attach themselves successful college athletes because what do we always say? We want those like authentic, relatable partnerships. And this does that. It has that relatability. It has that human connection. We worked with a company that was trying to get more people to look at accounting as a career. So why not work with a college athlete that has accounting as their major? So you're not, you're going past sports now. You're even looking at their major and bringing that connection. So people are making decisions about their career earlier in life. And we were able to tap into students like that early. That impact fully. I need to take a pause from my redneck coffee. Time for real coffee today sponsored by Mountain Dew. Can I talk about my favorite and I LDL ever that I I've witnessed this was when I first came along. There's there was a wide receiver for Nebraska's football team who I don't think ever actually played a meaningful down, but his name was **** coldest Crawford. He partnered with a local HVAC company to do all their commercials right because his name was **** oldest. I'm always the coldest. There so. Hey, this is the coldest Crawford. This local company was very thrilled to have a Nebraska Cornhuskers football player in their ads, and it worked out perfect. That's a great. That's a very positive, edible story. Like, lucky to be on scholarship, but he's on scholarship. Is not gonna go to the NFL's never gonna make a ounce of money playing professional football. But here he is profiting, you know, probably making, you know, solid 5 figures being in TV commercials for this local, for this local brand, just because he's a Nebraska football player with a cool name. That makes sense, right? Yeah. Power of influencer. Which is third, which is that authentic third party endorsement is really strong with NIL college athletes because again, they're seen as peers, buyer intended audience and they're also sinking your teeth into that audience at a very young age and projecting them as customers for life right. So yes and IL it kind of does stink as a college sports fan, but from a brand marketing perspective, it's a goal potential gold mine. And also I would say like don't just focus on the best players and the most famous athletes. Yes, do that. That's important, but. I brought up the story about the coldest Crawford just because there's also a lot of unique stories you can tell with student athletes. If you, you know, if you ever watch some of these shows on ESPN and Fox Sports and things like that, there's lots of compelling narratives about players, them overcoming struggles, them helping out their local communities, things like that that you can tap into. So work with people, whether it's an agency or people on your staff that are really tapped into the college sports scene and help you find those stories that align with your brand. As we always say, actually we haven't. I said we're seeing it for the first time now. You heard it here first. We heard here GOAT sport experts and come back again. You heard it here first without the A.