NIL deals are the new recruiting hack, so agencies are helping schools turn athletes into influencers.

Thanks to the advent of name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, aspiring college athletes are weighing schools based on their social media capabilities. Recruiting battles that once centered around factors like facilities and prestige are now moving to platforms like TikTok and YouTube.

To keep up with a landscape that has reinvented itself over the past five years, colleges and universities are turning to industry experts for help. One notable effort is occurring at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where year-old firm Article 41 is teaching student-athletes how to harness their NIL potential and land five-to-six-figure brand deals.

Article 41’s work at UNC was the subject of a recent profile in the New York Times. The article notes that Article 41 Co-Founder Vickie Segar inspired student-athletes to use social media megastars like Alix Earle as inspiration. Earle, Segar explained, can be paid as much as $450,000 for a single sponsored Instagram post.

Earle wasn’t a student-athlete in college, but other top earners on social media — such as gymnast Livvy Dunne — have walked that path. With help from firms like Viral Nation and Whistle Sports, the number of college sports stars making thousands from social media-based NIL deals has increased dramatically. UNC basketball star Alyssa Ustby charges as much as $15,000 for her sponsored posts, per NYT. According to the NCAA’s Data Dashboard, the average “disclosure value” of an NIL deal is up to $2,321, with nearly a quarter of all deals going for at least $1,000.

We’ve known for years that NIL athletes have serious earnings potential when it comes to branded content. What recent coverage makes clear is that schools can reap enormous benefits from that system, too. Segar told NYT that universities “want every athlete at the school to make as much money as possible because it will get better athletes.”

The most recent March Madness tournament provided an example of this phenomenon. NIL deals arguably helped Paramount sell out its March Madness ad inventory faster than usual. When the games began, all the one-seeds ended up in the Final Four. That was a sign that college basketball is getting more top-heavy — perhaps because highest-tier talent is migrating to the schools that offer the biggest moneymaking potential.

Safeguards are being put into place to ensure student-athletes can continue to thrive alongside the schools they are enriching. A revenue sharing agreement will cut players into collegiate earnings from athletics, and proposed roster limits could prevent top schools from hoarding NIL talent.

The more money student-athletes bring in, the more they risk exploitation from the schools they attend. Luckily, firms like Article 41 are getting ahead of those issues and setting up players so they can continue cashing in after they graduate.