NBC Sports Athlete Direct announces NIL campaign for literacy
NBC Sports announced Tuesday that NBC Sports Athlete Direct, its NIL program that connect athletes and advertisers, is partnering with the national early literacy nonprofit Reading Partners on an NIL campaign. NBC Sports Athlete Direct launched in April for athletes at Notre Dame, Temple and Vanderbilt.
Participating athletes will choose a book from their summer reading lists. Then they’ll post a picture of the book on Instagram, while tagging the book in their post. An athlete’s followers can buy the book by clicking a link in the athlete’s Instagram bio and Bookshop.org will be responsible for fulfilling the orders.
A portion of the proceeds will go to Reading Partners.
“NBC Sports Athlete Direct is an innovator in the way they are using NIL to create both financial opportunities for student-athletes as well as awareness-building opportunities for nonprofits that are doing crucial work in communities across the country,” Reading Partners CEO Adeola Whitney said in a press release.
“There are few foundational issues more important to our long-term individual and societal success than early literacy, so we are honored to partner with NBC Sports Athlete Direct on this initiative.”
NIL campaign offers volunteer opportunities
Many stakeholders involved in college athletics or NIL recommend that athletes pursue additional benefits and experiences from their NIL opportunities in addition to the compensation.
Perhaps similar in spirit to how many NIL collectives have filed for, and received 501(c)(3) status, to promote athletes partnering with charities, athletes involved in NBC Sports Athlete Direct’s latest NIL campaign will promote the literacy of students across the country.
NBC Sports Athlete Direct’s campaign with Reading Partners will promote opportunities for individuals to become volunteer tutors with the nonprofit.
The press release said Reading Partners launched an online tutoring program in response to COVID-19, in addition to its one-on-one, in-person tutoring options. Reading Partners says it has provided more than 2.5 million tutoring sessions since 1999.
NBC Sports Athlete Direct’s approach to NIL
Damon Phillips, NBC Sports’ SVP of Strategic Initiatives, previously told On3 that NBC Sports Athlete Direct offers two solutions to advertisers. One he described as turnkey and the other he labeled “more premium,” in regards to the number of college athletes involved in a campaign and their respective social media followings.
Phillips said the company’s NIL platform is focused on “the other 99%” of athletes, while offering mutual benefits to advertisers and athletes who may only have a few thousand social media followers.
“Compared to what we’re seeing as reported influencer engagement rates, we are very pleased with how the athletes are performing,” Phillips said. “There are smaller audiences but they’re highly engaged audiences. We’re looking at this as more of a scale opportunity that if we can aggregate athletes from across the country — and maybe they only have 2,000 followers or they have 3,000 followers — now you’re talking about a national Gen Z influencer network that’s highly engaged. And that’s what advertisers want.
“They want to find how to reach Gen Z and engage them.”
Not only does NBC Sports ask its partner athletes for the social media metrics of their promotional posts — a relatively rare occurrence despite so many NIL deals involving content posted online — but NBC Sports Athlete Direct also offers compensation for them.
Phillips previously told On3 that athletes can receive $70 for a social media post, $20 for posting a story and $10 for sharing the analytics of how their post performed.