Examining the collectives for each of the women’s Final Four teams

Each school in the women’s Final Four – No. 1 seeds South Carolina and Virginia Tech, No. 2 seed Iowa and No. 3 seed LSU – features a strong NIL infrastructure. That makes sense: Every player on the roster at some top women’s basketball programs can earn five figures annually from NIL deals, and the most marketable players in the sport can earn more than $1 million through partnerships with national brands.

On3 surveyed five stakeholders to analyze the approach and NIL infrastructure at the four schools.

Iowa

On Selection Sunday, the Swarm Collective announced a pledge-per campaign for Iowa’s men’s and women’s basketball programs, where fans could pledge money for each NCAA tournament win or free throw or 3-pointer made by either program. All donations will support the designated sport that a donor selects. Donors can’t pledge donations for a specific player.

The live events and mobile engagement company CUE provides the backend support for the campaign. The company has recently partnered with a number of collectives for NCAA tournament, baseball and softball fundraising campaigns. The Swarm Collective supports Iowa football and men’s and women’s basketball players.

“We’re set up a bit differently than many in that we raise money across all three sports and really socialize it so that every player has a minimum amount as an opportunity,” the Swarm Collective CEO Brad Heinrichs told On3. “This year, I think that number’s around $10,000, and so every player on any of those three sports has that opportunity for sure.

“Then, depending on donations that are specific to a particular sport, like say I go and talk to a big donor and he says, ‘I want to give $100,000, but I just want it to go to women’s basketball.’ OK, so the $100,000 goes to the women’s basketball bucket. … That raises that (original) $10,000 up to a certain amount for women’s basketball.”

He said sport-specific donations often are seasonal, so there are Iowa fans who currently are focused on women’s basketball.

“I think we do have a really good working relationship,” Iowa senior associate athletics director, compliance and sport performance/senior women’s administrator Lyla Clerry said of the Swarm Collective. “It’s just, obviously, we’re working kind of both sides. We’ve got to protect our athletes. We’ve got to protect our donors. But we also have to recognize where the benefits come from.”

The Swarm Collective announced that $4,183.88 was raised through the campaign so far — $1,696.36 through the first two rounds of the tournament, $1,035.84 in the Sweet 16 and $1,451.68 in the Elite Eight.

“People that sign up and say, ‘I’ll give, say, $100 for every win,’ you know, we’ll get emails the following day, ‘It’s the best $100 I’ve ever spent to see them win,’ “ Heinrichs said, laughing.

Heinrichs said the money could be evenly distributed to the women’s basketball players who have signed NIL agreements with the collective.

“I think all but one player on the roster for women’s basketball participates in our events and gets compensated accordingly,” Heinrichs said. “We don’t just hand out money. We ask our women’s basketball players to do work for charity and we pay them to do so. That’s kind of our model.”

Iowa guard Caitlin Clark, recently named Naismith Player of the Year, isn’t part of the collective. The Swarm Collective launched in July, “long after NIL became a thing,” Heinrichs said, noting that Clark was a popular candidate to be a brand ambassador for national brands in the summer of 2021, well before the collective existed.

The state of Iowa doesn’t have a law that regulates college athletes’ NIL rights, so the university and its athletes only have to follow the NCAA’s interim policy and institutional policy.

“Fortunately, we’re in a state without a state law, so we’re working kind of just under our own policy,” Clerry said. “When we created our policy, we really created a permissive space, so we wanted our athletes to be able to take advantage of NIL opportunities that come their way while still protecting the university and the Iowa brand.”

Iowa’s institutional policy encourages athletes to disclose their NIL activities, whether it’s the actual contract or the information about a deal. Clerry said the goal of the school policy is “not really trying to restrict their access and their opportunity,” but instead it focuses on athletes’ ability to engage in NIL opportunities when “they are on call as an Iowa athlete representing the university” or “on Iowa time.”

The metaphors Clerry used to describe Iowa’s approach are that the university sets the table for athletes “while maybe not actually connecting the dots of an actual NIL opportunity.”

LSU

In the second season of coach Kim Mulkey’s tenure at LSU, the Tigers are two wins from their first women’s basketball national championship. Two of their best players – Angel Reese (23.2 points and 15.7 rebounds per game) and Flau’jae Johnson (11.1 points and 5.9 rebounds per game) – are national figures in the sport as well as in the modern college athletics landscape as it relates to personal brands and marketing.

Johnson appeared on “America’s Got Talent” when she was 14 before recently returning for “America’s Got Talent: All-Stars.” Her personality, plus her diverse talents as a basketball player and rapper, provides her with tremendous opportunities. Johnson has partnered with LG Electronics, Meta, Powerade and Puma. Reese – the so-called “Bayou Barbie” – has partnered with national brands such as Bose, JanSport and Sonic.

In January, LSU announced Bayou Traditions as its official collective. The organization is filed under the name Geaux Enterprises, which also is the name of a previously independent collective that signed agreements with all the players on the women’s basketball roster. They’re now the same.

“We had the entire women’s basketball team under contract and with intentions to re-sign them as well,” Bayou Traditions president Brent Cunningham told On3.

A few weeks ago, Bayou Traditions held a fundraiser – “a real swanky dinner and auction,” Cunningham said – with some of the program’s biggest fans in attendance. On Instagram, Bayou Traditions and the official LSU women’s basketball team account collaborated in a post that shows some of the highlights of the event. The collective raised six figures that night. Cunningham credits Bayou Traditions’ agreement with LSU Sports Properties for creating greater support from the university and its coaches.

“It was an incredible testament to the support that the LSU women’s basketball program has here, specifically under Kim Mulkey,” Cunningham said. “She garners support like probably no other women’s basketball coach in the country.”

There are some fans who are specifically women’s basketball fans. Cunningham said the guest list for the collective’s recent fundraiser intentionally targeted that demographic within LSU’s fan base. There’s still crossover with fans who support other athletic programs or the whole athletic department, too.

Like the Swarm Collective, Bayou Traditions has partnered with CUE. Yes, it’s a new revenue stream for a collective, but it’s also a lead generator. There’s a chance some fans could pledge to donate a certain dollar amount per NCAA tournament win or 3-pointer but haven’t yet become a member of the collective.

South Carolina

There’s a case to be made that South Carolina has had to adjust its approach to NIL because of the legal and NCAA regulatory environment as much as any university in the country. “It’s been a journey, a journey with many twists and turns. But that’s this industry in a nutshell,” South Carolina associate AD/administration Hilary Cox told On3.

State legislators passed NIL-related legislation that took effect July 1, 2021, the same day as the NCAA’s interim NIL policy. Last summer, lawmakers suspended the law through June 2023.

An athletic department release from June 30, 2022, said the department “can now help facilitate NIL deals for student-athletes, a space in which the law prohibited staff from operation in the initial year of NIL implementation.”

“At the forefront of what we wanted to do is make sure that we were just educating,” Cox said. “We had really always taken a stance institutionally of, ‘Look, NIL is a very personal decision. Some athletes want to participate, some athletes don’t, and it’s not on us as the institution to make that decision for you.’

“(We looked at it) as we have these resources available to you just as we do mental health resources, just as we do student-athlete development resources. We have NIL resources available to you should you want to dive in a little bit deeper.”

In August, South Carolina announced a two-year, $2.2 million contract with Everett Sports Marketing (ESM) to create an ”in-house agency for all NIL activities” called Park Avenue, or Park Ave for short.

But in late October, the NCAA provided four pages of guidance regarding institutional involvement in NIL activities. The guidance said it was impermissible for “any individual or entity acting on behalf of the athletics department (e.g. third-party rights holders, third-party agents) representing enrolled SAs for NIL deals, including securing and negotiating deals on behalf of the SA.” Park Avenue’s Twitter account went nearly four months without posting, and it relaunched in February under a new structure.

“There’s a wide range of emotions with it because Park Avenue is very much traditional NIL,” Cox said. “It is what you want. It is a business taking data about an athlete and saying, ‘This is the reach of this athlete. Here’s the affinity that your followers have and that this athlete’s followers have. Look how this makes sense.’

“So when you’re looking at it, Park Ave was built on data. Park Ave was built on legitimate NIL opportunities. Jump-starting it, getting going and then being just a handful of weeks in, to then have that guidance come certainly was a little bit complicated. But nonetheless, I think everyone’s pivoted enough to meet the expectations of the guidelines, and we’re in a better spot now. But it is really frustrating to be put in a spot because institutionally, you want to give as many resources as you can to the athletes.”

South Carolina’s women’s basketball players had the opportunity to earn an average of at least $25,000 through the collective Garnet Trust, and they partnered with Rewind, a program that fights Type-2 diabetes.

Cox said South Carolina has provided a lot of “more-detailed education” to women’s basketball players and their parents, families and representatives. Many of the players have teams of representatives who support them.

“Really, it started with Coach (Dawn) Staley because Coach Staley lived it as a player, was living it as a coach from the endorsement side of things, so she’s able to speak to it in very, very real, practical terms,” Cox said. “That’s where I think they had a jump-start on everything … Additionally, in an NIL world now, those girls are recognizable anywhere that they go here within Columbia, here within the state, so businesses are just clamoring to use them to help promote whatever they have going on.”

Forward Aliyah Boston, the unanimous national player of the year in 2022, was one of five players featured in Buick’s “See Her Greatness” campaign, which included commercials that aired on linear TV. She also has partnered with crocs, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Orangetheory Fitness and Slate Milk.

Virginia Tech

The first anniversary of the launch of the sports marketing agency Triumph NIL, which has a roster of more than 60 Virginia Tech athletes across numerous athletic programs, is April 15, two weeks after the Final Four. The Hokies’ previous best postseason run in 11 appearances? It came in 1999, with a Sweet 16 appearance.

“I rank this team right behind the ‘99 national championship [runner-up] team with Michael Vick,” said Brenden Hill, a former Virginia Tech football player and a partner in Triumph NIL who previously worked for the Washington Wizards and Mystics. “Like as a fan of Virginia Tech, I say there’s the ’99 team that did it first. They got to the national title (game), and I put this women’s basketball team right behind it in terms of the pantheon of sports teams that played at Virginia Tech.”

Given the colliding trajectories of Virginia Tech’s women’s basketball program, the growing women’s basketball landscape and Triumph NIL approaching its second year of operations, Hill issued a motivated, optimistic call to action of sorts.

“Ultimately, just in full transparency, I think we still have a lot of work to do for the women’s basketball team. It’s not for lack of want to or interest; it’s more we just needed time to build that infrastructure to help these young ladies be successful,” Hill told On3. “So what I would say is more toward what we’re getting ready to roll out here when they’re done with the tournament. We have different memorabilia opportunities that we’re going to provide, different merchandising opportunities that we’re getting ready to provide with partners like NIL Store and our bookstores.”

Hill said the sports marketing agency has worked with every member of the roster through affiliate relationships other than junior guard Georgia Amoore, who’s from Australia. She’s one of the international college athletes whose NIL opportunities are limited because of the regulations of student visas. “That’s honestly the most frustrating piece of this whole NIL (era); someone who’s playing as well as she is, we can’t really help her leverage it in the States at least,” Hill said.

Hill said Triumph NIL might consult with Amoore to help her identify permissible potential opportunities when she returns home.

Triumph NIL has worked especially close with Elizabeth Kitley, who co-hosted a cooking class on a night in January when the Hokies didn’t have a game. Triumph NIL provides athletes with a questionnaire after they sign with the agency to better understand their passions, and one of Kitley’s is cooking.

There have been a handful of NIL collectives and marketing agencies that have facilitated NIL deals for Virginia Tech athletes. “We’re advocates for the athlete experience,” Hill said. “Our approach has been to enhance that student-athlete experience through name, image and likeness.”

Triumph NIL is prepared to onboard potentially hundreds of Virginia Tech athletes in the future, Hill said.

Last July, Hot Route Sports Marketing and Triumph NIL merged, such that the former owned the latter. ”Hot Route acquired the shares, the ownership, of Triumph through pretty standard merger docs and a new operating agreement,” Hot Route Sports Marketing founder and Triumph CEO Kelly Woolwine told On3 at the time. “Those shareholders became shareholders in Hot Route Marketing. There wasn’t a lot of ego.”

The collective Commonwealth NIL has worked with women’s basketball players, too, such as D’asia Gregg and Taylor Soule, each of whom has merchandise that Commonwealth NIL helped create. The Hokie Way is a non-profit corporation, and its board of directors features leaders of both Triumph NIL and Commonwealth NIL.

“I worked for the Washington Wizards and Washington Mystics for a while, so I’ve had a front-row seat of watching women’s basketball and the evolution of Athletes Unlimited even, different things like that, so I’m a huge proponent of women’s sports,” Hill said. “I believe that you see it statistically, whether it’s the ticket sales outpacing the men’s Final Four tickets sales, or what have you, that there is a credible opportunity for women’s sports. Ultimately, I think the future for Virginia Tech specifically is we’re getting ready to roll out a new subscription platform that’s going to allow fans to contribute in a way that creates equity across sports.

“I think unfortunately when NIL first started, everyone was focused on football, men’s basketball, right? We’ve been intentional about wanting to highlight women athletes and prop them up in an equitable environment. I think in terms of earning potential and things like that, really my statement is more of a call to action to brands, to fans, to get in the game and not sit on the sideline related to women.”