How partnerships between athletes and brands are beginning to resemble influencer deals

“We are seeing athletes operate a lot more like creators,” said Sophie Berman, head of talent and influencer at Havas Play UK.

Consider college basketball pair Haley and Hanna Cavinder, who currently play for the University of Miami. At the start of July, the twins struck a brand partnership with apparel brand Under Armour, though the value of the deal has not been made public. It’s the kind of arrangement players previously would only have had access once they’d been drafted into a professional side until the NIL deal of 2021.

In the U.S., recent developments have enabled them to begin doing just that. College ballplayers have been able to access influencer budgets since the milestone 2021 Supreme Court decision on NIL (name, image and likeness) rights. Within a year of that decision, the Harvard Business Review estimated 40% of varsity athletes at Texas Tech alone had struck a brand sponsorship.

Though the Cavinders’ deal with Under Armour is set to last three years, shorter duration deals, created with social media deliverables front of mind, are increasingly in vogue, according to Tom Stone, managing partner of influencer and social agency Re:act. Stone, who previously worked at L’Oréal between 2016 and 2019, recalls F1 driver Sir Lewis Hamilton’s partnership with the L’Oréal’s Men Expert line. The association lasted several years and saw the driver appear in TV ads and billboards.

“​​I’ve gone from that world to now seeing sports stars even being used for these month or two month long campaigns,” he said. Relationships of that length are more typical of influencer-brand relationships, which are usually shorter and arranged with less notice.

“[Athletes] are definitely favoring these more campaign based partnerships that are definitely more common and with creators,” added Berman.

There’s several tidal forces behind this change. Marketing budgets have shrunk in recent years, even as the slice of budget assigned to influencer work has grown, so marketers are finding smaller, shorter deals with creators of all stripes more attractive, said Stone.

At the same time, demand among athletes to work with advertisers – and do so directly, rather than being involved in a club or team partnership – is rising. “There’s certainly a shift,” said Allan McGoldrick, founder of talent agency AMG Sports Management.

Meanwhile, salaries for players at clubs outside the major leagues can be “peanuts,” said McGoldrick, who is based in Scotland. He estimated that some of his rugby and soccer clients earn less than the average wage in Scotland for their work on the field. That’s not a local issue – even U.S. President Joe Biden criticized the size of Caitlin Clark’s WNBA rookie salary (just over $76,000 per season).

Wherever they play, given the time limit on an athlete’s playing career, it’s unsurprising more of them consider brand deals a smart way to capitalize on their talent and profile. 

Josh Noble, associate director of strategy at We Are Social, points to the example of Jared McCain, a point guard who joined the Philadelpher 76ers earlier this year.

With millions of followers across Instagram and TikTok, plus brand deals with Crocs and Champ Sports, “it kind of felt like they’d signed a TikTok star more than they signed an actual basketball player,” Noble said. The 2021 NIL ruling, he added, has “opened up this new pathway for brands to capitalize on college athletes.”

But with clubs, teams or tours often placing restrictions on the types of brands their players can associate with, limiting their ability to meet brand obligations. “The club usually wouldn’t allow them to have conflicting partners,” said Clifford Bloxham, svp EMEA at entertainment and sports talent agency Octagon. 

That can create “friction,” McGoldrick added. 

Moreover, players and their agents consider shorter, influencer-style relationships with a brand a more efficient use of their time. While a traditional sponsorship or club-brand partnership might entail two to three years involvement from a player, Stone said a long-term relationship for an influencer usually translates to a single year – freeing them up earlier to strike further deals down the line, and earn more in the same time period.

Malph Minns, managing director of sports marketing agency Strive Sponsorship told Digiday that the longer-term, ongoing relationships implied with a sponsorship deal translate to more management and often, tight restrictions around other brand deals.

By contrast, he said that “media buyers [acting on behalf of advertisers] spend more frequently, have larger budgets, require less time to manage, can have both short and long-term relationships, and don’t have as stringent restrictions.

“Sponsorship seems to be a cognitive default for agents to monetise their talent away from the field of play, however more and more are switching onto the fact that media buyers can be less labor-intensive and more lucrative to monetise for their clients.”

NBA players such as Cleveland Cavalier Isaac Okoro are opting to work with lesser-known brands in exchange for more agency in their off-court work, for example.

Finally, athletes in lower tier leagues can still wield followings comparable to a micro or nano-level influencer, but with higher engagement rates. “I’d say the average lower league soccer player will have an engagement rate somewhere between 7-15%,” said Stone. By contrast, he estimates, the average engagement rate for a beauty creator could be as low as 0.4%.

To a large degree, that’s down to audiences considering athletes to be particularly “authentic” content creators, said Amy Luca, evp and global head of social at Media.Monks.

“It’s not a cultivated image. They either play well or they don’t play well,” she said.

Though emerging players don’t have the pull of established stars, they’re younger – and more likely to be comfortable creating content. Said Stone: “They’ve gone a lot more savvy as to how to actually shoot this kind of content.”

With higher engagement rates in mind, and shorter relationships enabling brands to partner with sports personalities for a lower cost, more influencer experts are recommending clients consider lower profile, or emerging sports creators for partnerships.

Amelia Hobson, an account manager at influencer and social agency Seen Connects, said she often recommends brand clients work with athletes and sports creators at the start of their careers.

“By the time [they’re] huge, the investment’s paid off,” she said.”

Seb Joseph contributed reporting to this story.