New York Times Article Reveals Earnings Gap in NIL Era

by Laura Rosado 27

September 13th, 2024 College, News

Female swimmers and divers are expected to earn three times as much as their male counterparts through name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, according to an article published by the New York Times.

The article summarizes how much athletes can earn through NIL deals. While it leads with the top earners – football and basketball stars who can pull in over a million dollars in a year – it also provides some data on non-revenue sports.

Unsurprisingly, football and men’s basketball lead the way, with an SEC quarterback expected to earn just over $1 million a year between sponsorships, school-associated collectives (boosters), and other streams of revenue. Data for the most lucrative sports is broken down by position.

Among Olympic sports, swimming and diving has a wide gap between expected earnings for women ($13,519) and men ($4,462). It’s not the widest gap; women also out-earn men dramatically in gymnastics ($20,857 versus $2,282) and volleyball ($10,645 versus $488).

The sport with the widest gap in the opposite direction is golf, where men ($23,101) project to out-earn women ($8,059) by more than $15,000.

All of the data in the article was provided by Opendorse, which advertises itself as “the leading athlete marketplace and NIL technology company.” It is based on all transactions processed between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2024. Sports-specific reports only account for the top 25 earners.

Opendorse was founded in 2012, nine years before NCAA student-athletes could profit off their name, image, and likeness. Today, the platform hosts around 150,000 athletes, both collegiate and professional.

Various sources have told SwimSwam that most swimmers’ earnings in the NIL era aren’t coming from collectives. Instead, they rely on agents who seek out brand deals separate from their school’s athletic department.

This won’t be the final word on the upper limit of NIL earnings. Student-athletes are bound to get more savvy in growing their personal brand, and there will surely be continuing legal battles, House v. NCAA or otherwise.

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This Guy
21 days ago

Are there any teams that have collective NIL deals where rostered athletes all get something? I wonder what kind of creative (and ridiculous) measures teams (all sports) will get up to

MDE
21 days ago

Makes sense.

There is more women that are elite international calibre swimmers in the NCAA than there is men.

Justin Pollard
21 days ago

I think projections are pretty worthless here. The top 1% of NIL earners in swimming with earn 90% of the dollars. The other 99% will earn very little. Obviously a problem when reporting “projections” (i.e. averages).

Hmm
22 days ago

Title X incoming…..

Bob
22 days ago

So when are we expecting to see equality or the dreaded forced “equity”?

Scott
22 days ago

I could be wrong but it said the widest gap was golf but the gap between sexes in gymnastics was 17k, 2k more than golf….

Sven
Reply to  Scott
21 days ago

“The sport with the widest gap in the opposite direction is golf,” so the sport where the men lead the women by the most.

Aye
23 days ago

Men’s Swim and Dive:
Mean: $4k
Median: 10 bucks and a high five

Admin
Reply to  Aye
23 days ago

I think that median is probably pretty generous.

NIL math
Reply to  Aye
22 days ago

That is pretty Mean…..

Qqq
23 days ago

Blowing the whole system up for beer money. Sweet!

Last edited 23 days ago by Qqq
Snarky
Reply to  Qqq
23 days ago

Don’t worry it will have ten more permutations and one generation will get a lot and next getting screwed.

Sven
Reply to  Qqq
21 days ago

If the system implodes just because we start giving the athletes a small piece of the multi-billion dollar pie that they make possible, then it’s a crappy system and deserves to fail

Coach
Reply to  Sven
21 days ago

Athletes were getting a piece, just not always in cash. I’m not just talking about scholarships either. The resources available to athletes at some institutions is worth 100s of thousands of dollars over the course of 4 years. That side might actually have to take a step back in order to write checks to athletes.