On a February afternoon on the College of North Carolina, a gaggle of seven college students on the diving staff sat barefoot on the ground of the school’s muggy natatorium. They have been staring expectantly at a petite blond lady in a black sweater perched on a concrete block.
Vickie Segar was there, with the blessing of the college’s athletic division, to pitch them on turning their TikTok and Instagram accounts into money cows.
“Let’s discuss concerning the cash within the creator economic system,” mentioned Ms. Segar, after explaining that she was a graduate of the college who had run a prime influencer advertising company for a dozen years. “Does anyone comply with Alix Earle?”
The scholars mentioned sure, amid a number of chuckles, as a result of asking a school scholar that query in 2025 is like asking if a millennial has ever heard of Beyoncé.
How a lot cash, she continued, did they suppose that Ms. Earle, a TikTok megastar who rose to fame with confessional-style movies about magnificence and faculty life, makes for selling a model throughout a number of posts on Instagram Tales? “$100,000?” one scholar guessed. “$70,000,” one other tossed out.
Ms. Segar, whose agency has labored with Ms. Earle on model offers, paused. She drew out her response: “$450,000 per Instagram Story.”
For a second, there was simply the hum of the pool and a single exclamation from one scholar: “Oh. My. God.”
Ms. Segar smiled and defined, “Our job is that can assist you guys usher in a few of that cash.”
U.N.C. doesn’t have a proper contract with Ms. Segar or her agency, Article 41. However the college has inspired college students and coaches to work with them. Later this 12 months, the agency’s pitch will even be part of orientation for freshman athletes on the college.
Welcome to the budding enterprise of turning faculty athletes into social media stars. The world of intercollegiate sports activities has been upended lately by the Nationwide Collegiate Athletic Affiliation’s guidelines that enable student-athletes to earn money from their identify, picture and likeness — referred to as N.I.L. For essentially the most half, it was considered as a change that might reward stars in faculty basketball and soccer.
Now, Chapel Hill is on the forefront of the following stage of the N.I.L. period. The college is supporting Ms. Segar in her effort, which started final fall, to show all 850 of its student-athletes into influencers.
The college doesn’t get a minimize of their earnings. However “they need each athlete on the college to make as a lot cash as attainable as a result of it can get higher athletes,” Ms. Segar mentioned.
This hoped-for, large-scale conversion of faculty athletes to influencers exhibits how N.I.L. offers “have grown exponentially in ways in which no one might have imagined or predicted,” mentioned Michael H. LeRoy, a regulation professor on the College of Illinois. “That is one other milestone in how that is evolving.”
And whereas many college students are desperate to make some further money, the efforts are alarming to some. “This saddens me,” Mr. LeRoy mentioned. “Their our bodies are being monetized on TikTok for the advantage of the college.”
A Gold Rush
The brand new N.I.L. guidelines have already minted just a few sudden stars in the previous few years. There’s Olivia Dunne, the 22-year-old Louisiana State gymnast, who can now command a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} for an advertorial TikTok submit. And Haley and Hanna Cavinder, 24-year-old twins, who made N.I.L. deals valued at greater than $1.5 million, in accordance with Forbes, whereas taking part in basketball on the College of Miami.
Ms. Segar, 42, who graduated from North Carolina in 2005 and lives in Chapel Hill, believes these gamers are simply the beginning. Uber, Athleta and State Farm are amongst firms which have already paid for posts that characteristic student-athletes displaying off their game-day appears to be like or routines. Only some college students will hit huge numbers, however Ms. Segar causes that many might ultimately make not less than just a few thousand {dollars} per branded TikTok or Instagram submit.
Article 41, which Ms. Segar based in 2024 along with her husband, Ben Gildin, a lawyer and former lacrosse participant at Kenyon School, will take a 20 p.c minimize of the offers, which is typical amongst influencer administration corporations.
Different firms, together with conventional Hollywood businesses and boutique corporations, have been pouncing on N.I.L. influencer alternatives, too. These efforts have largely been centered on prime expertise in basketball and soccer who would possibly someday play professionally. Artistic Artists Company, one in every of Hollywood’s powerhouse corporations, says it has labored with almost 100 athletes on N.I.L. offers since 2021.
ESM, a sports activities administration agency that traditionally labored with N.F.L. gamers, now represents a roster of present and former student-athletes, together with the Cavinder twins, and helps Clemson begin an in-house company.
However Ms. Segar’s agency is exclusive, thus far, in its perception that each athlete — benchwarmer or not — can have a following.
‘The Lion’s Share of the Cash’
Bubba Cunningham, the U.N.C. athletic director, works out of an workplace subsequent door to the Dean E. Smith Middle, the place its famed males’s basketball staff performs. From there, he oversees 28 varsity groups, lots of them elite, like girls’s soccer and area hockey.
Mr. Cunningham, whose given identify is Lawrence, has been the school’s athletic director for greater than a decade, which implies he has watched the full-scale erosion of the long-held discount between athletes and their universities: a free schooling in trade for his or her on-field prowess. That meant, formally not less than, no commercials, presents or cuts of merchandise bought by colleges, even jerseys with their identify on the again.
That mannequin has all however imploded lately amid a collection of antitrust circumstances. Based mostly on the preliminary terms of a landmark settlement, colleges like U.N.C. will provide student-athletes two potential types of compensation past scholarships within the 2025-26 college 12 months. The college is prone to have $20.5 million — calculated by taking 22 p.c of the newest annual income from 4 main faculty sports activities divisions generated from media and sponsorship rights and ticket gross sales — to pay athletes immediately, by way of a revenue-sharing settlement. The settlement would resolve a number of antitrust lawsuits filed towards the N.C.A.A. and the largest conferences by former faculty athletes.
At U.N.C., that $20.5 million will go to males’s and girls’s basketball, soccer and baseball, in accordance with Mr. Cunningham. Many other schools are doing related splits.
“Since that is concerning the industrial worth of the game, we’re going to attribute the cash to the game that earned it,” he mentioned.
Making an association with a agency like Ms. Segar’s provides him an answer for everybody else — particularly feminine athletes.
“The most well-liked participant on the most well-liked staff is what I’ve at all times mentioned will get the lion’s share of the cash,” Mr. Cunningham mentioned. “However essentially the most entrepreneurial scholar that understands social media and understands methods to create a social media presence can develop into an influencer.”
Bella Miller, a 22-year-old gymnast at U.N.C. with greater than 27,000 followers on TikTok, mentioned she wasn’t certain sports activities like hers would ever profit from N.I.L., with so few athletes ultimately competing professionally. Regardless of the success of somebody like Ms. Dunne, most manufacturers and brokers “don’t need to focus their time and power on sports activities like gymnastics, volleyball, swimming as a result of they didn’t actually see that potential,” she added.
The ‘Cringe-y’ Hump
Article 41’s pitch about changing into an influencer — full with a 50-page coaching information with ideas like “no, you don’t have to bounce” and “deal with every TikTok as a bite-sized lesson” — is aimed toward members of a cohort who’ve, in some circumstances, been utilizing social media since earlier than they have been youngsters.
For a lot of, the notion of changing into a creator is interesting. In a 2023 Morning Seek the advice of survey, three in 5 members of Era Z mentioned they might develop into influencers if given the chance. (And lots of of them may need the chance. There are 27 million paid creators in the US, and 44 p.c of them are doing it full time, in accordance with a 2023 survey from the Keller Advisory Group, a consultancy.)
Alyssa Ustby, 23, a star participant on the ladies’s basketball staff, who’s bespectacled and earnest off the court docket, is among the many highest-paid U.N.C. student-athletes in relation to N.I.L. offers.
She mentioned she had round 1,000 Instagram followers earlier than faculty: She’d submit photographs of mates, or senior promenade. However when she entered U.N.C. in 2020, TikTok was ubiquitous.
“I used to be like, ‘OK, what’s the worst that would occur — that I keep the place I’m?’” Ms. Ustby mentioned. She shortly turned successful with a TikTok collection that confirmed her coaching with different U.N.C. athletes, poking enjoyable at her kind as she tried to do laps with the swim staff and attempting to catch a ball with the ladies’s lacrosse staff.
Now, she has 132,000 followers on TikTok and 54,000 on Instagram and instructions between $10,000 and $15,000 for branded posts. Sponsors have included Papa John’s (“The place’s the very best place to eat an epic stuffed crust pizza?” she asks, consuming one as a examine snack and within the fitness center in a TikTok advert) and American Eagle Outfitters.
Ms. Ustby, who majored in promoting and public relations (and simply signed a free-agent contract with the W.N.B.A.’s Los Angeles Sparks), mentioned she noticed her expertise constructing a TikTok viewers as akin to an internship. She earned greater than $100,000 by way of model offers final 12 months and tracked them on a spreadsheet that can be monitored by her father, a wealth supervisor.
Jake Dailey, a 19-year-old freshman wrestler from Scranton, Pa., with moppy hair and a giant smile, mentioned that he was in all probability 10 years outdated when he began utilizing social media. He began posting foolish jokes and wrestling movies to TikTok as a highschool freshman in 2021, which his mom inspired, although it earned some derision from his friends.
“I’d say, yeah, it’s cringe-y,” however “it’s undoubtedly going to repay in the long term for me,” he mentioned. Mr. Dailey mentioned he had scored free merchandise and a current paid take care of an attire firm referred to as the Mutt Canine.
A lot of Mr. Dailey’s posts depict him shirtless, pointing his cellphone digicam at himself within the mirror or flexing. In his view, physique is a part of why student-athletes play nicely on social media. “Younger, match, enticing folks undoubtedly come from athletics,” he mentioned.
Mr. Dailey, who has 90,000 TikTok followers and 32,000 on Instagram, mentioned he could be thrilled to develop into a full-time influencer. In any other case, he plans to develop into a dentist.
The Thirst Lure Technique
Our bodies are, inevitably, a part of what’s on show. When Ms. Segar and Mr. Gildin spoke to U.N.C.’s divers, they urged them to spotlight their bodily talents. “I put diving on the prime with gymnastics” with methods that common folks can’t do, Ms. Segar informed the group, utilizing an expletive for emphasis. (She mentioned she deliberately peppers her talks with curse phrases to place the scholars comfy.)
Girls are sometimes the viewers that manufacturers are attempting to succeed in on TikTok and Instagram, they usually’re extra prone to submit as creators on the platforms, Ms. Segar mentioned. The success of athletes like Ms. Dunne and the Cavinder twins typically attracts a line of criticism about how a lot their appears to be like matter.
Ms. Segar admitted that athlete-influencers within the very prime tier usually tend to be conventionally enticing, however pushed again on the concept that the student-athletes she is pitching must undertake what she referred to as Mr. Dailey’s “thirst entice technique.”
A breakout star in all probability has “one thing actually particular about them — they’re both a prime athlete or they’re actually lovely or they’re extremely humorous,” she mentioned. “However we don’t want folks to get eight million followers. We want them to get to five,000, 10,000, 20,000 followers — that’s the place we begin seeing income.”
Ms. Segar acknowledged that race can play a task in figuring out which athletes acquire larger social media followings, exterior of sports activities like basketball and soccer. However she mentioned she believed that was altering with the youthful era. And, she added, “there may be extra money going to various creators within the N.I.L. house than there may be within the conventional influencer house that I’ve labored in for over a decade.”
Mr. LeRoy, the Illinois regulation professor, mentioned he was involved concerning the psychological well being ramifications as extra athletes pushed to have huge presences on social media.
Ms. Ustby, the basketball participant, mentioned a good friend on the staff who began build up her TikTok presence concurrently her didn’t take pleasure in the identical success.
“She was continually placing in all this effort, making movies, and they’d simply by no means go viral,” she mentioned. “She mentioned it actually simply felt like a recognition contest she was shedding, and it sucks, and that was a very strenuous factor on our friendship as a result of my stuff was type of taking off.”
Mr. LeRoy mentioned that it was value remembering that “these are undergrads, lots of whom are youngsters.”
“If a part of your N.I.L. technique as a faculty is to extend your student-athlete publicity to the social media ecosystem that’s full of irrationality and hate, you’re not serving to the psychological well being of the athletes,” Mr. LeRoy mentioned. “This isn’t a superb environment for them to be competing at a excessive degree after which additionally competing within the social media sphere.”
Mark Gangloff, U.N.C.’s head coach of swimming and diving, mentioned he was maintaining a tally of how influencing match into athletes’ “very full plates.”
“That’s my solely warning — how a lot is simply too many issues for anybody particular person to attempt to tackle at one time?” he mentioned.
(Article 41 and U.N.C.’s coaches have emphasised that the hassle is fully voluntary and that many student-athletes have opted to maintain their social media profiles non-public.)
High of the Algorithm
Ms. Segar and Mr. Gildin are self-funding Article 41, which has 13 full-time workers and 24 paid interns. (She bought her influencer company, Village Advertising and marketing, to the advert big WPP in 2022.) The couple are ready to speculate a number of million {dollars} into the agency, which they are saying has helped launch social profiles for greater than 70 college students and coaches who’ve signed agreements with the agency.
Article 41 is fielding requests for related work from different faculties just like the College of Michigan. It plans to hunt compensation for its companies from different establishments, although it’s not asking for cash from U.N.C., the place Ms. Segar and Mr. Gildin are donors and Ms. Segar sits on a board for its athletic booster membership.
The agency is intervening when manufacturers ship free merchandise to athletes and insisting that they’re paid for posting about them. It’s additionally attempting to sweeten present tools offers between manufacturers and groups by including guarantees of social media posts to their offers to assist groups earn income.
Athleta is among the many manufacturers which have already struck paid offers with Ryleigh Heck, a area hockey participant, and Ms. Miller, the gymnast, however it doesn’t formally outfit U.N.C. athletes in any other case. Michelle Goad, Athleta’s chief digital officer, mentioned it was testing adverts with the scholars partly to assist “construct a bridge to our subsequent era of shoppers,” and to see if the publicity might ultimately exceed that of conventional faculty sponsorships.
Anna Frey, a 17-year-old tennis star from Farmington, Utah, shall be one of many greatest athlete-influencers on campus when she begins her freshman 12 months at U.N.C. this fall, with 2.1 million TikTok followers who watch posts of her serving tennis balls, performing dances to widespread TikTok sounds and going to high school dances.
Her father, Tanner Frey, mentioned there have been some critical cons to that type of presence.
“I really feel like 90 p.c of individuals are so good within the feedback and 5 p.c are imply and 5 p.c are perverts,” he mentioned in an interview.
Mr. Frey mentioned he had made a block checklist of “about in all probability 30 phrases” that Instagram and TikTok might use to censor offensive feedback on his daughter’s posts. He mentioned the “meanest, nastiest” feedback got here from gamblers who would berate his daughter within the feedback if she misplaced a match.
Nonetheless, he mentioned it was “the very best time ever within the historical past of the world to be a feminine athlete,” partly due to the alternatives tied to model offers and the brand new N.C.A.A. guidelines for funds.
“4 years in the past, none of this was even attainable,” he mentioned. “If Anna wished to go play faculty tennis, she’d should make a very laborious choice between that and accepting half one million {dollars} a 12 months from these manufacturers and going professional.”
He added, “It’s good they will go and do each now.”
Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.
