Thank you for your continued support of this newsletter. Please share with anyone who would be interested in this content.

If you are interested in NIL athlete representation, NIL education for your college or high school, and student-athlete personal brand coaching, please contact me: [email protected]

Today’s Case

TCU Athletic Director talks NIL donor fatigue

It’s a real thing, according to TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati.

In a recent Q&A with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, he noted that his program, along with other major athletic programs, are running into a problem they probably didn’t anticipate when NIL first started.

“… the NIL piece is concerning, the sustainability of it,” Donati said. “I think we’re seeing a lot of collectives around the country and NIL supporters are starting to run out of gas.

“Hey this was really popular when it first came out and now the same people that want to support it are saying how much longer do you need me to do this? This is not how I envisioned supporting the university … I’m seeing a lot of headlines about ‘Help, this isn’t sustainable.’ I’m talking about from the big boy schools, not Group of Five schools.”

Donati prefers an in-house approach to NIL fundraising.

“I’ve changed my tune on this, I would prefer it’s in-house,” Donati said. “I would prefer to control it, for it to be on the ground level. We’ve got tremendous fundraisers here, I prefer they’re the ones running it. I’d like to give them university credit for supporting it. I’d like to give them priority points, we can get a little more creative with it if we had total control of it. I think our collective does a really good job and I commend them for doing what they’re doing, but if I could, that would be one more I would make tomorrow.”

The Verdict

• Donati is right

  • Donors are giving money with seemingly no end in sight. Pretty soon, these people will run out of money, become uninterested in continuing to give their hard-earned cash, or both.

  • Collectives are trying to solve some of these problems by emphasizing small, regular donations. ($25-100/month with special privileges for every level of donor.) However, collectives need hundreds (if not thousands) of these donations to remain sustainable.

• Donor fatigue is a very real problem

  • Donati is not the only speaking about this; last year, Walker Jones of Grove Collective (focused on Ole Miss athletics) discussed this in detail while noting donations spike when teams are winning and dip when programs are losing.

  • Additionally, while collectives serve a great purpose in college athletics, creating sustainable models is proving to be tough, as some collectives are shutting down operations a few months after forming due to lack of funding.

Sharpie enters the NIL game!

The writing stationery company signs former Washington football stars Michael Penix Jr. and Rome Odunze. Check out this video for more!

Thank You for reading today’s newsletter

^{I discuss insights and news related to name, image and likeness in 3 minutes or less every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 12p ET/9a PT.}

Follow Sports Court on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube for more NIL content!