Learfield is set to reorganize the presentation of its NIL offerings.
The company is slated to announce the launch of “Learfield Impact” a new brand vertical that rolls up its varying NIL efforts into a singular place, Sports Business Journal has learned.
An official announcement is expected on Monday.
“Our offerings in people, content and technology has developed significantly over the past three and a half years,” Learfield EVP/NIL Growth & Development Solly Fulp said. “And we figured we needed a strong brand, that umbrellaed all that.”
Learfield had previously launched “Learfield Allied” in 2021 as an initiative to address NIL centered on intellectual property. This new vertical, meanwhile, is designed to streamline NIL offerings for clients in one place.
Those key areas include the following:
- People and resources via the company’s dedicated team of NIL leaders across college sports.
- Original content powered by Learfield Studios.
- Access to Learfield’s Compass NIL platform.
“Being innovative is more important now than it ever has been in college sports, and that innovation is focused on NIL,” Grant Jones, Learfield’s SVP/Head of Content, told SBJ. “Collaborating with Solly and his team and having a brand like ‘Learfield Impact’ allows us to say, ‘OK, what can we do now with content and athletes that maybe we couldn’t do two years ago?’ Because suddenly you have athletic departments who are much more interested in hearing that word ‘innovate,’ and are innovating themselves, frankly.”
The coming announcement also arrives on the verge of the company releasing its annual “Learfield Impact report,” which includes varying findings in the NIL space. Among the takeaways in this year’s findings:
- Brand partner spend on NIL reached $140M -- up from $70M last year.
- More than 4,000 athletes and 950 brand partners participated in NIL campaigns (up from 2,000 athletes and 500 brand partners last year).
- Those athletes participating in dealmaking shifted from 57% male, 43% female last year to 51% male and 49% female this year.
The full report can be viewed here.
