NCAA athletes ‘are now influencers’ under new rules: MediaKits co-founders
College athletes hoping to land brand deals under the NCAA’s new rules can now find expertise from fellow 21-year-old entrepreneurs Casey Adams and Kieran O’Brien, as well as the influencer platform they launched.
“Athletes are now influencers, and they have followings online that they can monetize,” Adams said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “So we want to be a tool that these athletes can utilize and not only get brand deals but to best position themselves for future brand sponsorships.”
Like high school recruits who went straight to the big league, Adams and Casey skipped college to become full-time entrepreneurs. Their new startup, MediaKits, helps college athletes and other influencer hopefuls build social media resumes.
Adams and O’Brien launched MediaKits in August, one month after the NCAA officially changed its rules allowing athletes to profit off their name image and likeness (NIL). Brands ranging from Dr. Pepper (KDP) and Bojangles to local car dealers and restaurants have been dishing out deals to a wide variety of athletes. Opendorse, a technology company that connects athletes to prospective business opportunities and tracks NIL data, told Yahoo Finance Live in August that players are expected to earn roughly $1.5 billion in the first year under the new rule.
Opendorse also reported that nearly 90% of all NIL deals in the month of July centered around social media promotion. Adams and O’Brien specialize in that area, and they built MediaKits to help potential influencers show off their social platform to potential sponsors.
Customers fill in their information, including the usernames to their social media accounts. Within minutes, the software as a service presents the user with a “media kit” that highlights their social media followers, post engagement, and other social media statistics. The data updates with each social media post, effectively ensuring that prospective influencers' resumes are always up to date.
“There's been a ton of adoption across various different verticals,” O’Brien said. “Athletes are definitely a big portion of the users that we've had signed up so far. But I would say it's pretty evenly split between athletes, musicians, social media creators, bloggers, and so on and so forth.”
MediaKits is currently working with clients from talent agencies Loyalty Above All Sports and Enclave & Key. Adams and O’Brien are both social media influencers themselves, with 200,000 and 45,200 Instagram followers respectively, and share their expertise with their clients.
NCAA athletes can use big plays to boost social media engagement
O’Brien stresses that college athletes are now influencers just like fashion bloggers or your favorite chef on TikTok, so there's an audience for the player’s platform regardless of their success or failure on the field.
But better athletic performance on the field can still help grow players’ social media notoriety.
Michigan State football’s Jayden Reed had a game-changing punt-return touchdown turn into a viral moment last Saturday as the Spartans came back to win the game. For Reed, a MediaKits user, it was the perfect opportunity to grow social media engagement and improve his social media resume, Adams said.
Reed’s first Instagram post following his punt-return touchdown generated more likes and comments than any of his other posts this season. With MediaKits technology, Reed’s profile immediately updated with the improved traffic numbers.
“I think we're very well positioned to not only help educate these athletes but to truly give them something that they can utilize once these big plays happen,” Adams said.
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