Getting NIL for Unpaid Labor: Self-Branding U.S. “Student-Athletes” in the Influencer Marketplace

Abstract

For decades, the NCAA and its member schools profited richly from sports while denying student-athletes “employee” status and a direct compensation share in generating that value. Since 2019, state-level reforms pertaining to student-athletes’ use of their own name, image, and likeness, alongside a landmark Supreme Court decision, radically transformed the collegiate commercial landscape and burgeoned influencer-style, social media endorsement opportunities. Examining nearly 400 news articles published during that time, this qualitative textual analysis tracks and critiques the media coverage and stakeholder discourse around this issue as key policy events (both legislative and judicial) unfolded and shaped these prospects. The essay argues that NIL has been championed as market liberation for those willing to self-brand and hustle gig-economy leads—in keeping with ideals of neoliberalism and especially for already-marginalized female student-athletes—but that any such celebration remains premature when unpaid labor on the field of play persisted exploitatively.