South Carolina Hosts Gamecock NIL Summit

Local businesses took in a “NIL 101” Monday night as South Carolina Athletics held its first Gamecock NIL Summit at the Cockaboose Club inside Williams-Brice Stadium. The event gave area businesses an opportunity to learn more about maximizing their opportunities in partnering with student-athletes as well as what may be occurring in the near future as it pertains to Name, Image, and Likeness.

“We’ve been having a lot of conversations about how we start to introduce this concept of commercial NIL to our ecosystem with what will be a post-House Settlement world,” said Executive Associate Athletics Director Hilary Cox, who oversees South Carolina’s NIL efforts. The House vs. NCAA settlement is an agreement that compensates former student-athletes and establishes a revenue-sharing model between schools and current student-athletes. The final ruling is set to come down on April 7. “We want them to leave here with some plans on how to work with our student-athletes in the future. We want the businesses to understand the importance of it and have some ideas as they move forward on how to do it.”

“Our world of college athletics is changing very rapidly, and it will change in a few weeks,” said Athletics Director Jeremiah Donati. “House vs. NCAA is a landmark lawsuit and represents what is really a watershed moment in college athletics.

“The power of our brand at this school is palpable. I’ve been really impressed with how the local community have jumped on in support of all of our student-athletes. That’s a big differentiator for our sports and our student-athletes knowing that they can come here and be supported by the community.”

Approximately 50 local businesses were represented at the event and sat in on informative presentations from Cox and Donati while also taking part in a Q&A session. Several South Carolina coaches were on hand as well to chat one-on-one with attendees. NIL came to be in 2021 after the NCAA changed its rules following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows student-athletes to be compensated for the use of their name, image, or likeness. Commercial NIL is brand partnerships where student-athletes are paid for marketing activities.

“We want to drum up business on the commercial NIL side for businesses that may have been thinking about it, but haven’t done it yet,” Cox said. “We also want them to reach out to their friends and other businesses to tell them how they found success with this and how it worked for them.”

Kelly Barbrey, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Experience Columbia SC spoke of her experiences partnering with student-athletes and how it has indeed work for her organization.

“Experience Columbia SC is a tourism and marketing organization for the Columbia region,” Barbrey said. “Our goal is to drive economic impact to local businesses. We are driving tourists to those establishments. One of our biggest assets here in Columbia is the University of South Carolina. It’s natural fit that we partnered with them. We’ve been doing a lot of influencer marketing, and we decided it would be the perfect opportunity to segue that into NIL deals. We wanted to use our partnership with athletes to drive more people to Columbia.

“In year one we partnered with Cole Messina from the baseball team and Te-Hina Paopao from the women’s basketball team, and we did some Q&As with them on where they loved to go in Columbia. People want to know where these athletes like to go to get their coffee and where they like to shop. This year we partnered with Mazeo Bennett (football) and Joyce Edwards (women’s basketball), and we did this really amazing video with Mazeo where he talks about all the cool things he likes to do around Columbia, where he liked to eat, and his personality really shines through. When people watch this video, they not only get to know Mazeo; they get to know Columbia.”

Local businesses that are interested in learning more about NIL partnerships are encouraged to contact Hilary Cox in the Athletics Department.