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- You don't need a large following to land NIL deals
You don't need a large following to land NIL deals
Tariq Ahmad
March 04, 2026
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Social media engagement graphic (Photo Credit: Asgard Marketing)
Plenty of college athletes don’t do NIL deals.
Not because they are not interested.
Rather, they sometimes think they need a massive social media following in order to secure partnerships.
When I ran my NIL agency, I was able to land multiple partnerships for athletes with less than 1,000 social media followers.
Yes, there will be brands that look for certain follower thresholds.
However, not every brand operates like that - and student-athletes can use this to their advantage.
How?
Focus on engagement
For athletes that have smaller social media followings (less than 10,000), they should highlight their engagement rates when pitching brands.
As I’ve previously discussed, an athlete with 5,000 and 35% engagement rate is generally more valuable to brands than an athlete with 50,000 and a 2% engagement rate.
Lean in to being a student-athlete
This is a big differentiator for the athletes, as they can provide a unique point of view to their followers and associated brands on how brand products incorporate into the athlete’s daily lives.
While student-athletes might think their life is boring, their audience (and brands) beg to differ.
Additionally, creating regular student-athlete style content can potentially lead to more deals.
Understand that deals won’t be big
While student-athletes with small followings can score partnerships, they should understand that most deals will not be large-scale deals.
Some may be product-only, others may have a small payment. However, a deal is a deal - especially if it’s a brand a student-athlete loves and they are happy with being associated with said brand.
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