After first dipping its toe in the NIL space with EA Sports College Football 25 in February, Learfield fully delved into it this week. The sports marketing firm, a behemoth multimedia company representing over 200 collegiate properties, announced its NIL software, Compass, will shift gears to connecting athletes to brands.
With over 30,000 athletes already onboarded to the Compass app from previous activations and 12,000 brands under exclusive partnerships, Learfield’s NIL expansion is certain to send shockwaves through the college football landscape.
Massive EA Sports College Football 25 Opt-In Deals Leads to Learfield’s NIL Expansion
Learfield’s Compass app assisted in ushering over 11,000 NIL offers from EA Sports to college athletes. The goal was to get all 85 scholarship players from the 134 FBS teams on the video game College Football 25. $600 was offered regardless of position or playing time, while cover athletes were offered a separate ambassador deal.
While the offers went through Compass, the logistics of those deals, such as signups and payment, went through a different company, OneTeam Partners. Now Compass can handle all logistics of future deals.
“We’ve been, if not the most active organization in NIL since it started, certainly one of the most active businesses in NIL,” Learfield president and CEO Cole Gahagan said in a conference call last week.
“I don’t think it’s an overstatement for me to say that this is probably the biggest, most meaningful step that we’ve taken in the NIL era.”
“Launching a platform brings school brand partners at the local, regional, and national levels into one system to be used by sellers and the student-athletes themselves to create more deal activity,” Gahagan continued.
“Not just the mere fact about what’s being introduced, but also that it’s being introduced at this inflection point of student-athlete compensation and NIL activity.”
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The move to add in-house dealmaking allows Learfield to connect the 30,000 athletes already signed up to Compass with the 12,000 brands it is already partnered with while adding oversight and visibility on high-profile deals. With Compass, athletes wouldn’t be charged a fee, whereas brands pay 2%.
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