NIL is short for name, image, likeness, and is the short expression that defines an important legislative move by the NCAA and NAIA, the two main college athletic associations in the United States. The maneuvers relax the definition of amateurism in those organizations to finally allow college student-athletes to capitalize on their name, image and likeness.

Until the NAIA passed an NIL move last December, then the NCAA followed this past summer, a student-athlete taking money from a sponsor, even on social media channels that might have nothing to do with their sport, would be a violation of their amateur status and jeopardize their ability to compete. Now, however, college athletes can be paid for public appearances, profit from merchandise sales of their own apparel or accept money from companies to do collaborations and partnerships on social media channels. 

Masai Russell is a four-time first-team All-American in track and field at the University of Kentucky. She has over 150,000 followers on Instagram and over 21,000 on YouTube. While the track and field part plays a role on both, her content is more focused on fashion and style. She hopes to one day own her own line of apparel. 

I wanted to check in with a student-athlete capitalizing on the NIL opportunity to see what, if any, differences there are in how they handle influencer partnerships, and see what impact the NIL is having on their day-to-day. I also wanted to gauge if student-athletes are seeing this as an opportunity to just make some money, or are thinking more strategically about now NIL can be a platform to build something bigger down the road.

So Masai and I caught up this week to talk NIL and her brand.

Today’s episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger. 

We’ve been talking recently to Meredith Jacobson, an independent influencer marketing consultant who was on a past episode of the show, to tell you about how she uses Tagger with We are Boosters. 

Hear more about how she uses Tagger on today’s episode.

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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