Incentives are blocking the NIL long-tail economy

In the current NIL Economy landscape, brands and agencies are actively seeking student-athletes with the most significant influencer potential to promote their products and services. Throughout this environment, the prevailing sentiment is a desire to ‘democratize NIL,’ enabling all athletes to participate in this burgeoning economy.

Agencies excel in fostering connections between celebrity athletes and brands, focusing on relationship management and advocating for the highest possible monetary returns for their clients. Their financial incentives align closely with securing these high-value endorsements, as they earn commissions based on such deals. While this model has undoubtedly thrived for the top 2% of celebrity student-athletes, it has inadvertently sidelined the remaining 98% or the long-tail of the student–athlete population. Regrettably, this relationship between brands and agencies does not scale beyond the most obvious celebrity segment of student-athletes.

This example of an industry clutching to its legacy business model in the face of a tectonic shift is in our opinion a variation of ‘Innovator’s Dilemma’, and also signals an industry ripe for disruption. Think Kodak and the digital camera phone. Kodak had decades of hardened processes, resources (people & patents), and distribution channels to reach consumers globally, but failed to transition to mobile photography fast enough. The NIL Economy landscape, although relatively new, has similar competing forces that need to be addressed to achieve network effects that will reinforce a sustainable NIL economy that will benefit all stakeholders.

At CIMS.AI, we believe that regardless of what happens with NCAA or government oversight, the genie is out of the box, and we are betting that tools like NIL-GPT will unlock the data asymmetry that is currently hindering the network effect and the participation of the long-tail of student-athletes and business sponsors.

About CIMS.AI

CIMS.AI was cofounded by ex-Salesforce, Vlocity, and Siebel Systems software executives with the mission to democratize the emerging athlete-influencer economy. CIMS.AI is focused on ensuring athletes across all sports are prepared for the opportunity to participate in the NIL economy and has developed several GAI solutions, including Powered by NILGPT for education and enablement, NIL Agent Desktop for NIL Agreement Compliance and Reporting, and NIL Influencer Scout to support Title IX.

About NIL

The meaning of NIL or Name, Image, Likeness is the right for an individual ‘influencer’ to monetize their Name, Image, and Likeness. Historically, Media and Professional Sports Celebrities have worked with talent marketing agencies to take advantage of this monetization opportunity.

Skip Roncal

Co-Founder & CEO