The Ultimate Brand Ambassadors: Female Athletes

The House Settlement looms. Of the $2.78b of the settlement, “Approximately 75% is expected to go to football players, with 20% going to men’s and women’s basketball players and 5% for other athletes.”[1] This raises significant questions around equity and payouts, particularly how those relate to Title IX. In fact, on November 15, the Democratic Women’s Caucus issued a letter to US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona inquiring about exactly that stating:

“We are deeply concerned that, if approved, the back-payment thresholds established in the settlement could be misinterpreted as compliant with Title IX or used as a justification to apply Title IX to athlete compensation going forward…Clearly, the originally proposed breakdown that would result in less than 10% of damages going to women athletes is not equal to the rate paid to athletes of the opposite sex, and it makes gender-based distinctions in rates of pay which is in violation of the Title IX Regulations.”[2]

It has been a long known fact that women’s sports receive less investment (even if investment has spiked in recent years, particularly on the professional side of things). However, the House Settlement’s distribution underlies the stark reality that the inequity between men's and women's sports - especially in college - remains a vast chasm.

Herein presents an opportunity for women to get the flowers they so well deserve - NIL. When we first think of NIL, we think of what it has done for Power 5 players mainly in football and basketball. This is true - seven figure deals for athletes continue to move along the narrative and discrepancy of compensation. However, what most fail to recognize is that the macro narrative consistently overshadows the micro opportunity: micro influencers.

In a study done by Collbstr in 2023 reported that “77% of influencers actively monetizing their content are female.”[3] As businesses look more and more for micro influencers to market their products and businesses (94 percent of small businesses plan to increase their marketing spend and more than 70 percent plan on increasing their social media marketing budgets[4]), they will increasingly look to athletes to become their brand ambassadors as athletes have a 3.9 percent engagement rate compared to 1.8 percent engagement rate of non-athlete influencers.[5]

Female athletes are the single greatest marketing investment businesses can make in today’s creator economy. It’s time female athletes were given the tools to help level the scales.

Time and time again, we have seen that the collegiate system will not value women’s sports on equal footing to that of men’s, regardless of the sea change created by Title IX. Micro influencing via NIL is a path to change that trajectory. At Dealiyo, we are giving women athletes a tool to find, negotiate, and sign NIL deals with businesses. 

In order to right-size the NIL ship in terms of compensation, women athletes will have to do a significant amount of work hunting, signing, and performing NIL deals compared to their male counterparts. However, by empowering women athletes, NIL can be a source of revenue for women that prior to the 2021 NCAA ruling was not available to them otherwise.

Support women athletes. Market with women athletes.

[1] https://www.bradley.com/insights/publications/2024/10/preliminary-approval-of-settlement-in-house-v-ncaa-could-bring-significant-changes-to-college-sports#:~:text=Approximately%2075%25%20is%20expected%20to,in%20payments%20over%2010%20years.

[2] https://democraticwomenscaucus.house.gov/media/press-releases/democratic-womens-caucus-letter-calls-application-title-ix-collegiate-athlete

[3]  https://www.fohr.co/articles/7-stats-that-show-women-dominate-influencer-marketing

[4]  https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2023/10/01/how-small-businesses-are-spending-their-marketing-dollars-in-2024/

[5]  https://famesters.com/blog/complete-guide-to-athlete-influencer-marketing/