Five Years After NIL, the Market Is Booming. And Deeply Unequal.
OPENING STATEMENTS
Five years ago this week, the college athletics revolution began to hit the accelerator. At midnight on July 1, 2021, the NCAA officially rescinded its prohibition on college athletes monetizing their name, image, and likeness, a policy it had vigorously defended for decades and likely with a clear understanding of just how much money might be at stake. The capitulation didn't come from the goodness of anyone's heart but from antitrust pressure. More than a dozen states whose NIL laws were set to take effect that day, the outcome of more than a decade of litigation that began when former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon filed suit in 2009.
The system cracked. Athletes won. Even if the NCAA and other institutions now are trying what they can to put - at least some of - the toothpaste back in the tube.
The first images were striking. Hanna and Haley Cavinder, at the time twin basketball players at Fresno State, appeared on a Boost Mobile billboard in Times Square on day one, among the first college athletes to sign under the new rules. Sports Illustrated dedicated a cover story to Miami quarterback Eri King, detailing his endorsement deals over $20,000 and co-founding an athlete booking platform called Dreamfield.
The prevailing assumption was that social-media-savvy athletes, including women from traditionally underpublicized sports, would benefit most. That assumption was not entirely wrong. It was incomplete in ways that matter enormously to the more than 500,000 athletes, especially the more than 200,00 in Division I, competing in NCAA sports today.
The NIL market is now estimated at $4.5 billion, a figure Opendorse released in June 2026 that represents a 50% upward revision from its own projection just a year prior. The company's CEO has said it could reach $6 billion by the end of the decade, which would approach this year’s total salary pool in Major League Baseball. It’s quite a stark and rapid change for college athletes who were told for decades their labor had no market value beyond a scholarship.
But athletes and parents also need some context. The median NIL deal is $60. Not $60,000. Sixty. Dollars.
According to the NCAA's own NIL Assist Data Dashboard, the median total annual NIL earnings per athlete is $1,031, as the vast majority rely upon modest, local partnership. Seventy-five percent of all NIL money flows to the top 5% of athletes, and 68% of all deals are worth under $1,000. Football accounts for about 40% of all agreements; men's basketball takes about 15%. Women in non-revenue sports at Group of Five schools average $1,425 a year. Meanwhile, Arch Manning at Texas is valued at $6.8 million, Carson Beck was $4.3 million last year at Miami, and #1 overall pick AJ Dybantsa was north of $4 million playing basketball last year at BYU.
The market is real. But it’s also structurally unequal, and it has been since the start. In year one of NIL, the top 10% of earners captured 93% of all compensation. The median athlete was making $35. If you are a gymnast, a swimmer, or a lacrosse player, the NIL era has done something important in principle and relatively little in practice.
The House v. NCAA settlement, which took effect last July 1 opened a second front. Schools can now directly share revenue with athletes, capped last year at $20.5 million per institution, and this upcoming year at $21.3 million. The settlement included $2.8 billion in back pay to former and current athletes. But 90% of that fund was allocated to football and men's basketball, 5% to women's basketball, and 5% to everyone else. Eight female athletes have appealed that allocation on Title IX grounds, and the case is pending at the Ninth Circuit. Schools are already spending beyond the cap through commercial channels, as Opendorse estimates an additional $735 million flowing through those structures in 2026-27.
In that sense, not much has changed. For decades, the NCAA built a billion-dollar marketing apparatus around football and men's basketball - i.e., selling jerseys, licensing video games, signing television deals - while the athletes whose names and faces moved the product saw none of it. NIL didn't disrupt that priority structure. It privatized it. The money still flows where it always has. The difference is that now it flows through the athletes the NCAA was already selling.
This is the pattern. The rules change, the money grows, and the institutions find the edges immediately.
The next five years will determine whether NIL becomes a genuine pillar of athlete economic rights or calcifies into another arrangement that looks like progress from the outside and runs like the old model within: concentrated at the top, compliant on paper, resistant to broad equity. The legal architecture is better than it was. The money is real. The fight is not over.
EXHIBIT A
As a longtime Celtics fan, it was a little painful and sad to hear the news of Jalen Brown’s trade this week to the 76ers. What’s the relationship to college basketball you ask? It’s a warning label for anyone getting involved in private equity. When the Celtics’ new private equity-backed ownership signs off on a $6.1 billion purchase, “basketball decisions” can start to look a lot like cost-control mandates dressed up as roster strategy. If a storied NBA brand with global revenue streams can see a homegrown All-NBA wing turned into a line item, what does that mean for a non-revenue Olympic program on a campus budget? Once financial engineers sit between the scoreboard and the balance sheet, the asset most likely to be rationalized isn’t men’s hoops or football. It’s the sports that already live on the margins.
EXHIBIT B
Richard Pitino’s revelation this week illustrates something we’ve suggested for some time: in a revenue-sharing landscape, schools without football may have some considerable advantages in other sports. The Xavier men’s basketball coach, at a hearing for college basketball players suing the NCAA over an extra year of eligibility, testified that the program was operating with “a little over $14 million” during this upcoming season. Resources that might otherwise be absorbed by football can now be concentrated into basketball and other sports, creating new competitive tiers almost overnight. If this is the baseline in just year two, the ripple effects across recruiting, competitive balance, and Title IX resource allocation are only beginning to take shape.
ON THE DOCKET
Reminder: you now have four weeks to get remaining eligibility waiver requests on file before the NCAA’s July 31 deadline under the outgoing rules. Because college athletes can’t file directly, schools need time, documentation, and coordination across compliance, legal, and sport administrators to even get a waiver in the queue. It’s a flaw we covered significantly in January, but it’s the current reality. Clock is ticking.
FOOTNOTES
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Following this week’s changes, mainly in the Pac-12 and Mountain West, the number of FBS schools that have changed conference alignment in just the five years since Texas and Oklahoma moved to the SEC. That’s more than one-third of all FBS schools.
