Re-imagining the autograph session in the NIL era

The decades-old tradition of waiting outside a stadium or practice facility for your favorite athlete to sign an autograph isn’t going anywhere. But a more efficient, perhaps more meaningful way to conduct the timeless autograph session has emerged, one ideally suited for the NIL age.

NIL-focused INFLCR and event solutions company Virtual Tables are partnering to change the routine autograph session into a virtual engagement. It will provide fans with a one-of-a-kind authenticated digital signature following a personalized virtual interaction with an athlete. 

Virtual Tables will tap into the INFLCR Global Exchange’s network of more than 75,000 active athletes to offer them custom virtual and hybrid experiences, such as autograph sessions and meet-and-greets. And by leveraging Virtual Tables’ DigiSign platform, it eliminates the need for a physical location for the event.

“If you have a perfect 10 [score] on the balance beam, if you hit a walk-off home run, if you score the winning touchdown, your popularity and fluctuation can go up and down,” Virtual Tables CEO Courtney Jeffries told On3. “So why not work with a tool that has an immediate and responsive way to capitalize on the ‘now’ excitement? … This allows for more than just a head-down, ‘Let me sign a poster, who’s next?’ [event]. The student-athlete is going to be engaging and interacting with fans.”

With a school’s alumni base and fans dispersed nationwide, this partnership will enable fans residing anywhere to benefit. If you’re a 13-year-old girl in San Diego whose room is full of Paige Bueckers posters, for instance, you no longer have to fly with your family to Storrs, Conn., for a chance for an autograph. Now there is an efficient way for you to not only receive a digital autograph from the UConn basketball star (if she were to take part in this NIL activity) but also interact with her in a virtual live, one-to-one conversation.

But this tool isn’t merely for the top 1 percent of most marketable athletes. As Jeffries said, it is designed for any athlete that has an autograph that somebody wants. The athlete can charge for it, setting their own price point.

Interested athletes who are in INFLCR’s Global Exchange can work directly with Virtual Tables on creating their virtual events. The student-athlete will then announce, likely via social media, that they are signing autographs at a certain time on a certain day. Fans can click on a link to buy a ticket and receive an email invite with a code to join.

Jeffries said there is an “elegance” to in-person meetings that they plan to capture with these virtual events, which is why designing them with a producer’s lens is critical. They want to eliminate any impersonal awkwardness where both fan and athlete show up for a quick digital signature. Instead, Jeffries said, there needs to be elements of “showmanship and pageantry.”

To that point, a student-athlete during an event can host a question-and-answer session or engage in a back-and-forth interview with a teammate. The platform also supports online polls or the inclusion of a highlight reel – anything that can bring out more of the athlete’s personality – that fans can engage with before their one-to-one interaction with the athlete.

“This is built with a highly experienced producer’s lens to understand the nuances of what queue management looks like,” Jeffries said. “What is going to be the best experience while somebody waits in line virtually so that they don’t have that sort of Zoom fatigue? What is the best experience for a [student-athlete] who maybe isn’t technologically savvy to navigate seamlessly to the point that they’ll use this again? This wasn’t hacked together with a couple people brainstorming.

“This was producers saying, ‘Let’s take this experience that we execute at a high end all the time, and make a virtual component of this.’ I don’t want shortcuts. I don’t want to have hacks.”

Jeffries sees these re-imagined autograph moments providing a way to change how a student-athlete maintains relevance throughout their careers, not only merely during the years they play for a university. And given the complexities surrounding navigating the NIL space effectively and efficiently, she said the partnership with INFLCR was ideal. INFLCR, which works with more than 4,000 college and pro sports teams, has done the legwork, she said, to ensure that their partners are vetted so there is a genuine shared perspective about supporting the student-athlete first. 

“Between Virtual Tables’ DigiSign offering and INFLCR’s capabilities, we are able to open up endless opportunities for student-athletes to not only talk with their fans face-to-face,” INFLCR CEO and founder Jim Cavale said in a statement, “but also build brand loyalty through personal interactions and customized live autograph sessions that result in a unique digital keepsake.”