NIL will only enhance this double-sided endorsement ecosystem.

In just months, student-athletes won’t have to wait to monetize their name, image, and likeness rights. They understand the value of their brand. Schools recognize that. These institutions know their future success hinges on the help they provide student-athletes with NIL.

Schools will provide more content and personal brand development resources. Athletes will offer more unpaid endorsements.

Both will win in the NIL Era.

Social media is will lead the NIL Era 

We’ve talked almost exclusively about social media as it is related to endorsement value at this point. But endorsements occur in many ways – appearances, consumer products, traditional advertising media, etc… These are all on the table for professional athletes, and soon will be for those at the college level.

So, why social? Because social media makes athletes and their endorsement value measurable and accessible.

Opendorse has facilitated and published athlete social media endorsement transactions for a decade. That data and experience allows for accurate endorsement valuations and analysis. By measuring thousands of transactions with factors including an athlete’s sport, status, current follower count, average engagement rate per post, impressions per post; we remove the guesswork to provide an estimate of the dollar amount an athlete could command from sponsors in exchange for publishing one branded content post on their own social media channels.

This cost per post can be translated to other activations beyond social media. Additionally, social media allows brands and advertisers to understand post value, establish benchmarks to understand how athletes rank against their peers, and analyze follower demographics including age and location.

All told, social media makes endorsement marketing smarter and more measurable than ever before. 

In our DNA

Athlete endorsements are in our DNA. This marketplace is the reason we exist in the first place. Opendorse was built in 2012 with a simple idea in mind – to open the doors to endorsements for more athletes and their partners. It’s right there… Opendorse.

Early on, Opendorse’s core function was to provide technology to thousands of athletes and brands to facilitate social media endorsement campaigns. And we haven’t stopped. But in those early days of Opendorse, we would often think… “what if student-athletes were allowed to monetize their NIL rights?”

It could feel like a pipe dream at times. The idea of unleashing hundreds of thousands of collegiate athletes into an endorsement marketplace… one that we were already building… was an incredibly powerful vision.

Rather than wait, we went to work. We continued to maximize and monetize endorsement value for thousands of the top athletes in professional sports. But simultaneously, we began building the unpaid side of the endorsement ecosystem alongside hundreds of the top college athletics programs in the country.

College athletes wanted content and their programs wanted promotion. We spent those 8 years from 2012 getting ready.

• We partnered with the leading player unions at the professional level (NFLPA, NBPA, MLBPA) to manage athlete endorsement campaigns with sponsors and licensees from post to payment.
• We joined the most innovative leagues and teams in North American professional sports including the NHL and PGA TOUR to enhance player brand-building programs with technology solutions.
• We provided the platform to 100+ college athletics programs and over 10,000 student-athletes to maximize the value of the athletes’ brands. We built a foundation by preparing them for future paid endorsement success while facilitating unpaid endorsements for their school and program.

Today 20,000 athletes use Opendorse to maximize the value of their personal brands. We sit at the center of the athlete endorsement ecosystem, facilitating action on behalf of athletes and their partner organizations from teams and leagues, to sponsors and advertisers.

We’ve been here for a decade — and now we’re ready.