Auburn quarterback T.J. Finley becomes first college football player to sign NIL deal with Amazon

Amazon has inked its first college football player to a deal, marking another major first in the NIL space.

Auburn quarterback T.J. Finley has signed on with Amazon Fashion, where his custom clothing line will be sold. He announced the news Tuesday in a paid partnership on Instagram. Ranging from sweatshirts to cell phone pop grips, Finley has 26 total pieces of merchandise up on the marketplace. Items range from $17 to $35 and are available for shipping through Amazon Prime. 

He is not the first collegiate athlete to sign on with Amazon, which brought in revenue of $469.8 billion in 2021 and is the go-to spot for e-commerce, cloud computing and digital streaming. Clemson basketball’s Brevin Galloway signed with the online realtor behemoth earlier this month.

In his Instagram post, the Auburn quarterback shared he helped sign the deal through Dreamfield. The NIL deal-making platform was founded by former Florida State quarterback McKenzie Milton and former Miami quarterback D’Eriq King. Finley also pitched a six-month trial of Amazon Prime Student in his social media announcement.

Finley is currently in the middle of the a quarterback battle at Auburn with Texas A&M transfer Zach Calzada. He finished last season as the starting quarterback, coming in for former Tigers quarterback Bo Nix. Finley started his collegiate career at LSU before transferring to The Plains.

Amazon is not the first major corporation to partake in NIL. Meta has partnered with INFLCR, while Nike, Under Armour and Adidas have crafted specific strategies for the new era of college athletics. And Gatorade has been selective in its process.

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T.J. Finley’s On3 NIL Valuation

The Auburn quarterback holds an On3 NIL evaluation of $125k, which ranks in the top 300 of the college football NIL rankings. With a total of 75,000 social media followers, he also has a per post valuation of $927.

Auburn running back Tank Bigsby has the highest evaluation on the team, totaling out at $547K.

The On3 NIL Valuation is the industry’s leading index that sets the standard market NIL value for high school and college athletes. A proprietary algorithm, the On3 NIL Valuation calculates an athlete’s NIL value using dynamic data points targeting three primary categories:

+ Performance
+ Influence
+ Exposure

While the algorithm includes deal data, it does not act as a tracker of the value of NIL deals athletes have completed to date, nor does it set an athlete’s NIL valuation for their entire career. The On3 NIL Valuation calculates the optimized NIL opportunity for athletes relative to the overall NIL market and projects out to as long as 12 months into the future.