Bill Carter's NIL/mba aimed to educate potential stakeholders

Bill Carter has made the workshop rounds since the inception of NIL.

The longtime marketing executive left his company in 2019, deciding with his business partner to sell Fuse Marketing. After sitting in meetings with major brands for more than two decades, he was taking a step back.

What came from the reset was an NIL consulting and education firm, Student-Athlete Insights. With Burton Snowboards as a main client during his time at Fuse, he had seen amateur athletes develop into Olympic champions. Brand building and endorsement deals were popular in a sector where going to college was not part of the natural progression.

Making connections and relationships in his previous role, he found himself educating stakeholders on NIL shortly after the sale of Fuse. Carter has traveled to brand headquarters and jumped on Zoom calls with universities over the last year, providing an “NIL 101” crash course and explaining the purpose of his company.

But for every group he talked to, he always received a call after from a few people working on an NIL side project or wanting to invest dollars in the space. It’s a driving reason behind his thought to launch the NIL/mba, which has two courses starting later this month.

“What I recognized in the last year is that almost every time, like clockwork, within a couple of days, I would get a call or two from just one or two of those 50 to 75 people that were in the room,” he recently said in a phone interview. “Those people would say, ‘I learned so much, it was really great. But I’m working on this thing. Now what do I do?’

“And then it was this recognition that I had, which is the workshop is really great. For the majority of people who either don’t really need to focus on NIL, it’s part of their job, but it’s sort of on the periphery. But if you really needed to get into the detail because you were building something, or creating something or investing in something, those one-hour workshops don’t go that depth.”

Pulling from teaching experience, NIL poll

Along with his NIL advisory business, Carter is a professor at the University of Vermont where he teaches a course on name, image and likeness. The so-called “NIL business administration degree” will pull from his business school lessons.

His connections in the NIL industry don’t stop with his marketing background, though. He also oversees the NIL Research Poll, which is one of the most robust in the industry with a panel of around 5,000 student-athletes. The poll has produced multiple interesting data points, such as only 8% of respondents have witnessed NIL causing rifts/tensions or say that it’s a “locker room problem.” It also provided some context in January of just how many athlete had seen their coaches promote NIL collectives.

He plans to take a deeper look at NIL and all the facets of the industry in the six-week course. Taught through a weekly Zoom lecture and discussion, the course costs $1,250. Applications must be received by May 12. Carter plans to run one group from Wednesday, May 17 to Wednesday, June 21. The second block will star Monday, May 15 and run until Wednesday, June 21.

The interest in expanding knowledge in NIL is there, which is a driving force behind the decision to even launch the initiative. Carter said he has received interest from a variety of industries and will have professionals in his class ranging from the tech sector to private equity to the NFL.

“I get excited thinking about who’s in the class because I think that’s a lot of brain power and a lot of learning that happens between those people because of their unique experiences,” he said. “But I’m also excited that each one of them is in it because they are intending to build something, or create something or invest in something in NIL. Otherwise they wouldn’t do it; it’s not worth their time.”

Educating potential stakeholders on NIL market

Carter started to outline a syllabus and schedule for the class well before he released the application and announced the dates. With six sessions to work with, he’s broken them up into different topics: NIL from a legal and marketing size, student-athlete opportunities, the NIL market, brands and professional service providers, supporting student-athletes and NIL special topics.

He plans to attack each Zoom call with the lens of someone trying to evaluate the entirety of the space. He could obviously spend hours chatting about the future of NIL collectives or his thought on deal platforms.

The same could be said for the state of the NIL marketplace. In a column for the Sports Business Journal in October, Carter estimated, “10 student athletes will make $1 million-plus and possibly 100 more could make $100,000-plus.” There is a stark contrast in the earning potential between the top percentile in each college sport, too.

Carter has not been impressed by brand’s investment in NIL. While a select group of companies continue to return to the space, spending plenty of dollars on endorsement deals, NIL is not close to reaching its brand potential. He believes there is growth for national brands to spend marketing dollars.

“I guess the two pieces that I look at from the start, and we’ll obviously talk a lot about in the course, is the level of brand participation. I think it’s relatively low,” he said. “That recent report from Sponsor United shows that they’ve tracked about 2000 deals in the last year and a half. And, you know, on the surface, that might sound like a lot, but that’s actually not a lot of brands.”

The NIL/mba is meant to give a better education on where name, image and likeness is going and what hurdles it’s facing. Federal legislation, which leaders have been asking for more than a year, does not appear to be coming around the corner. Revenue sharing may not be far off.

Carter does not see it as his job to drive his students into or away from the NIL market.

“While I’m obviously personally invested in the success of NIL, I’m not a cheerleader,” he said. “I’m not the one running around, saying to people, ‘NIL is for everybody. Actually it’s not for everybody.’ I feel the same way about the course. While I would love for these 20 people to all do amazing things and all have an interest in continuing to pursue it because of things they learn in the course, if the opposite also happens, maybe I would take that as a positive as well, right?

“If a financial advisor is already working in professional sports, takes the course and says this is great learning, but what I learned is this market is not ready for me. It’s not worth my time yet. I probably saved that guy some time.”