Michigan State women's gymnastics signs team-wide deal with charitable NIL collective

Collectives have been overly focused on football and basketball since the inception of NIL.

Collective after collective has popped up since July 1, 2021. Very few have been focused on sports outside of those two moneymakers.

Michigan State women’s gymnastics is breaking that trend, though. The Spartans made NIL history Wednesday when they signed a team-wide NIL deal that will see each athlete pocket $5,000. Arranged by This is Sparta!, a collective organized by Charitable Gift America, a 501(c)3 charitable organization, each athlete will give five percent of the compensation to a charity of their choice.

Team-wide deals have become common across college athletics. SMU’s Boulevard Collective is set to pay players on both the football and basketball teams $36,000 a year — a total payout of $3.5 million annually — for NIL activity. And Texas Tech‘s Level 13 Agency has committed $25,000 for each women’s basketball player.

What is a first, per Charitable Gift America, is the deals includes a philanthropy component.

“Spartans never settle — every day, they strive to achieve greatness and lift up those around them while making the world a better place,” Dr. Thomas Dieters, who serves as board president for Charitable Gift America, said in a news release. “This is Sparta! gives individuals a unique opportunity to support MSU Athletics and well-vetted charitable causes at the same time. It’s a game-changer that will make a difference on and off the field.”

Michigan State women’s gymnastics finished third at the 2021-2022 NCAA regional finals. The team finished second at the Big Ten Championships this past season.

This is Sparta! launched in February. The collective hopes to pool together enough Spartan donors to offer student-athletes an “exclusive NIL contract valued at $50,000, beginning in the fall of 2022.”

Michigan State collective scene

Dieters is a Michigan State alum, part of the reason why Charitable Gift America played a role in the Michigan State collective. The collective has plans to support Michigan State’s football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball.

Charitable Gift America has no plans of stopping its expansion in East Lansing, though. The non-profit’s website states its experience in gift planning gives donors the ability to give cash, publicly traded stock, real estate and cryptocurrency. The group has already done individual deals with a couple athletes at other schools, too.

This is Sparta! is the second collective to join the Michigan State collective market. The East Lansing NIL Club is the first-ever player-led collective in college sports and launched in June. ELNC will allow fans to purchase passes for access to in-person events with players. Participating players will split the proceeds equally. ELNC has sold just 400 of its 4,000 available passes as of Thursday morning.