Tennessee softball roster lands teamwide NIL deal with The Lady Vol Boost Her Club
The surge of interest in women’s sports is real. The evidence is all around us – even in the world of NIL.
The Lady Vol Boost Her Club, a collective focused on supporting female student-athletes at Tennessee, announced Friday it signed a teamwide NIL deal with the softball roster. The collective – which has multiple membership levels – has been the biggest supporter of Tennessee female athletes since its launch in 2022. The deal is another sign of that support and expanding interest in women’s sports.
“This is what YOU the fans and corporate sponsors made possible,” the collective said in a post promoting the news.
The news comes ahead of one of the season’s biggest series for Tennessee.
The No. 4 Lady Vols are hosting No. 7 LSU in a top-10 showdown on Rocky Top. Tennessee (32-7, 12-3 SEC) sits atop the SEC standings as it prepares for the top-10 matchup. This weekend marks consecutive seasons the Lady Vols and Tigers have met for a three-game series with both teams ranked inside the top 10. Plus, the Lady Vols have won all five SEC series they’ve played this season, including sweeps of South Carolina and Missouri.
The 2024 roster is loaded with top talents, like All-American outfielder Kiki Milloy, standout pitchers Karlyn Pickens and Payton Gottshall and first-team All-SEC infielder McKenna Gibson. Plus, the Tennessee softball program is one of the proudest in the country with eight trips to the Women’s College World Series.
Teamwide NIL deals becoming more common
This isn’t the first time a collective or brand has worked together to support an entire women’s sports roster. Since the NIL Era started there have been headlines all over the country with teamwide NIL opportunities for women’s teams:
- Texas Tech women’s basketball
- Minnesota women’s soccer
- Georgia women’s basketball
- UCLA women’s basketball
- UNLV women’s basketball
- Michigan State women’s basketball and gymnastics
- Ohio State women’s basketball
- Louisville women’s basketball
- Utah women’s basketball and gymnastics
But backing for softball teamwide opportunities has lagged behind other sports. Outside of softball-crazy Oklahoma, where the Crimson and Cream collective has been a big supporter of teamwide deals for the Sooners, few collectives have signed the entire team.
That might be changing soon, though.
Recent data from SponsorUnited showed that softball largely drove the growth of NIL brand deals for women athletes in 2023. In fact, the report found that Pickens ranked fifth overall in female athletes who provided the highest engagement rate for brands on social media. Additionally, four of the top eight athletes in that ranking were softball players.
The individual and teamwide NIL opportunities come at a time when women’s college sports continue to rise to new heights. An astonishing 18.7 million people recently watched the women’s college basketball national championship game between South Carolina and Iowa. The title game was the most-watched basketball game – men’s or women’s, college or pro – since 2019. Excluding football and the Olympics, it was the most-watched sporting event since 2019.