Why Most Athletes Aren’t Making Real Money From NIL (And What Actually Changes That)

Take It Easy Group - Chief of Staff for Athletes + Creatives

TLDR: NIL was supposed to level the playing field for college athletes.  Four years in, only 1% earn more than $50,000 annually from NIL.  Most earn less than $100 per year.  The opportunity is real, but it’s being captured by a tiny minority while the majority are left managing a third job with no infrastructure, no strategy, and no support built for what NIL actually requires.  Here’s what’s actually breaking down and what the athletes who are figuring it out have in common.  

When NIL legislation passed in 2021, it was genuinely revolutionary.  

For the first ime in the history of college athletics, athletes could profit from their name, image, and likeness.  Sign endorsement deals.  Build brands.  Create businesses.  Generate real wealth during their playing careers.  

It was the right call.  Long overdue.  

But four, almost five years in, the numbers tell a different story than the headlines.  

Only 1% of college athletes earn more than $50,000 annually from NIL.  Most earn less than $100 per year.  41% of all NIL deals go to football players alone.  And the athletes at the very top, the Arch Mannings of the world earning $6.8M, are capturing the vast majority of value while hundreds of thousands of athletes are left with almost nothing.  

The Numbers Behind the Headlines

The NIL conversation is dominated by the outliers.  

The quarterback who signed a $2M deal before playing a single college game.  The gymnast with a million followers who landed a major brand partnership.  The basketball player whose NIL value rivals some professional athletes.  

These stories are real and they are genuinely exciting.  

But they represent a fraction of a percent of the athletes navigating NIL.  For every athlete earning life-changing money, there are thousands earning almost nothing, and spending significant time and energy trying to change that.  

Understanding why requires looking at what’s actually breaking down.  

The Gap Between Signing and Delivering

Signing a deal and delivering on a deal are completely different things.  

A brand partnership requires content creation, coordination, approval processes, posting schedules, relationship management, and performance reporting. It requires someone managing an ongoing relationship, not just executing a transaction.  

Research shows athletes are signing contracts without fully understanding their obligations, such as excessive social media requirements, exclusivity clauses, rights they' re giving away without realising it.  Not because they’re careless, but because nobody around them is built to manage the process.  

So deals fall apart.  Brands don’t renew.  And the athlete is left wondering what went wrong.  

The brands aren’t walking away because their athlete isn’t talented or marketable.  They’re walking away because the execution wasn’t there.  And without execution, even the best deal is just a piece of paper.  

An Audience Is Not a Brand

A social following without a brand strategy is just an audience.  It doesn’t automatically translate into sustainable revenue or long-term value.  

What actually makes an athlete’s NIL valuable to a brand isn’t just the follower count.  It’s the trust they’ve built with their audience.  The authenticity of their voice.  The clarity of what they stand for.  The consistency of how they show up.  

Those things don’t happen by accident.  They’re the result of deliberate brand building, a clear point of view, a consistent identity, a brand that stands for something beyond the sport.  

Without that strategy, NIl stays transactional.  One deal at a time.  No compounding value.  No foundation for the businesses and ventures that generate real long-term wealth.  

The Hidden Cost

Research describes NIL as a “third job” for athletes, on top of their sport and their academics.  

Studies show athletes are shifting training priorities to accommodate NIL work.  Spending less time training to fulfill content obligations.  Sacrificing the very thing that makes their NIL valuable in the first place.  

This is the fundamental misalignment at the heart of the NIL problem.  Your NIL value is directly tied to your performance.  The better you perform, the more valuable your platform becomes.  Because NIL at the expense of performance is building on a foundation that’s actively eroding.  

The Mental Health Reality

Beyond the time demands, NIL has introduced psychological pressures the support structure around athletes wasn’t built to handle.  

Athletes are managing public images across social media platforms 24/7.  Navigating team dynamics where some teammates are earning significantly more than others.  Dealing with social comparison not just on athletic performance, where they’ve been trained to compete, but on sponsorship amounts and follower counts they never had to think about before.  

Research documents increased anxiety, burnout, and stress among athletes navigating NIL.  The mental health infrastructure to support athletes through this largely doesn’t exist.  Athletic departments are still catching up.  And the athletes themselves are often navigating it alone.  

The Concentration Problem

NIL value isn’t just concentrated at the top of the earnings scale.  It’s concentrated by sport, by school, by gender, and by position.  

Football players capture 41% of all NIL deals.  Athletes at Power Five schools have dramatically more access than those at smaller programs.  Male athletes in revenue-generating sports have significantly more NIL value than female athletes in non-revenue sports, despite the fact that some of the most engaged NIL audiences belong to female athletes in sports like gymnastics and volleyball.  

This concentration is a reflection of where the infrastructure exists and where it doesn’t.  

The athletes earning less than $100 a year aren’t less marketable than they could be.  They’re less supported.  The gap between the top 1% and everyone else isn’t primarily a talent gap.  It’s an infrastructure gap.  

What the Athletes Who Are Figuring This Out Have in Common

The athletes successfully building long-term NIL value aren’t necessarily the most famous or the most followed.  

They’ve separated the work of finding opportunities from the work of executing them.

They’ve built support around the operational side of NIL so they can stay focused on performing.  

They’ve stopped treating NIl as a series of transactions and started treating it as a business.  

They’re thinking beyond the next deal to what they’re building over the next decade.  Using NIL as a foundation for businesses, investments, and media companies that will generate wealth long after their playing career ends.  

What Needs to Change

The NIL ecosystem needs to evolve. Not in terms of legislation or deal structure.  In terms of the support infrastructure around athletes.  

Athletes need people who can run operations, not just advise on them.  Brand strategists who execute, not just consult.  Mental health support built for the specific pressures NIL creates.  Athletic departments that think beyond compliance when it comes to NIl education.  

The corporate world figured this out decades ago.  Companies at a certain level of complexity need operators, not just advisors.  Athletes are running businesses now.  The ones who build that operational infrastructure early will have a significant advantage over those who wait.  

The Bottom Line

NIL is one of the most significant opportunities in the history of athletics.  But four - five years in, the infrastructure around it isn’t working for most athletes.  

The gap between the top 1% and everyone else is widening.  And it will keep widening until the support structure around athletes evolves to match what NIL actually requires.  

About Take It Easy Group

Take It Easy Group is a Chief of Staff firm for athletes, creatives, influencers and celebrities. We specialise in building the operational framework that allows elite performers to execute on their opportunities and build something that lasts.  

If you want to talk about what it looks like for your situation, reach out at hello@takeiteasygroup.com or book a free consultation chat here.