NIL Risks Entrenching Gender Inequities

When the National Collegiate Athletic Association authorized students to monetize their name, image and likeness (NIL) rights in 2021, the decision was framed as a transformative disruption of amateurism, a chance to democratize financial opportunities across all college athletes, regardless of gender, sport or institutional affiliation. Advocates envisioned a marketplace where visibility, entrepreneurship and merit could eclipse systemic bias.

Four years later, the results are starkly disproportionate. Despite NIL’s promise of inclusion, early outcomes reveal a new iteration of entrenched hierarchies. Football and men’s basketball athletes capture the overwhelming majority of NIL earnings, while women athletes and athletes on nonrevenue teams fight for a marginal share of the market. Without deliberate structural reform, NIL threatens to entrench long-standing inequities under a modern guise.

NIL’s Uneven Impact

Industry data shows that nearly 80 percent of NIL dollars flow to male athletes, particularly in football and men’s basketball. Female athletes, even those with notable athletic success or strong social media presences, remain vastly underrepresented in the NIL economy.

Structural factors reinforce this disparity. Booster-backed NIL collectives, which pool financial resources to support athletes, heavily favor men’s sports. Corporate sponsorships and media deals mirror historical inequities, channeling investment into male-dominated programs while relegating women’s teams to the periphery. Visibility begets value, and in a marketplace where women’s sports still struggle for equitable media exposure, the playing field remains far from level.

NIL was not designed to correct these underlying market forces, but it now magnifies them. Without intervention, it risks solidifying a two-tiered economy in college athletics.

Structural Challenges on the Horizon

Experts in college athletics governance warn that emerging legal frameworks will further complicate the NIL landscape. The House v. NCAA settlement is slated for implementation on July 1. It will allow universities to directly share revenue with student athletes, capped at $20.5 million annually per institution.

Under this model, institutions must balance new forms of direct compensation with Title IX obligations and financial sustainability. Yet as legal scholars note, mechanisms for ensuring gender equity in relation to institutional NIL payments remain vague. Enforcement is expected to focus on egregious violations, not on proactively monitoring systemic disparities.

It is worth noting that these reforms are built around the infrastructure of the Power Four conferences, former Power Five members and high-revenue sports programs, leaving smaller institutions to bear the consequences. A key critique raised during policy discussions is that the NCAA is funding legal defenses and settlements (such as House v. NCAA) largely stemming from Power Five football, despite receiving no revenue from the College Football Playoff, which is independently operated by the conferences. The NCAA’s primary income source is March Madness, yet it shoulders the regulatory and legal burdens tied to football governance.

The settlement also introduces roster limits as a cost-control and Title IX compliance strategy. While reducing football roster sizes may create financial savings, roster limits risk unintended consequences: shrinking athletic opportunities and destabilizing programs that have historically expanded access for women. Institutions must tread carefully to avoid worsening inequities under the banner of financial reform. Fewer athletes also mean fewer enrolled students paying tuition and contributing to campus life, subtler but significant consequences for institutional sustainability.

Additionally, with federal guidance on NIL payments and Title IX in flux since the change in presidential administrations in January, it remains unclear how Title IX should apply to direct athlete compensation and NIL structures. This regulatory uncertainty is unfolding alongside a broader retrenchment in higher education equity efforts. Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have faced mounting political and legal challenges, with many institutions scaling back public-facing commitments to equity under state pressure or due to administrative caution.

For instance, states like Florida, Oklahoma and Texas have enacted laws and policies that dismantle DEI offices and restrict related programming at public universities. These states collectively host more than a dozen Power Four institutions, including prominent programs in the SEC and Big 12 conferences. The elimination of DEI infrastructure in these states not only limits institutional capacity to address equity in NIL implementation but also exacerbates compliance challenges under Title IX. In this climate, even well-intentioned NIL reforms risk deprioritizing gender equity, not only at institutions facing state legislative pressures, but across the broader higher education landscape, where structural limitations and regulatory ambiguity increasingly constrain equity-focused work.

Without a coherent federal framework, institutions are left to interpret compliance on their own, often inconsistently and without the tools to embed gender equity into NIL design. As regulatory momentum builds, there is a real risk that top-down reforms will entrench existing hierarchies rather than dismantle them. Legal pressure is mounting as well: Cases against the NCAA are increasingly addressing more nuanced areas of NIL, including media rights, retroactive compensation and the classification of athletes as employees. These developments signal that without clear, equity-centered policy, institutions may soon find themselves not only out of compliance, but in court.

Building Equity by Design

Higher education must recognize that NIL is not just a financial or athletic issue; it is a fundamental equity issue. Institutions cannot afford to replicate old hierarchies under a new system.

Concrete steps forward include:

• Building equitable promotional strategies: Ensure comparable visibility across men’s and women’s sports by investing in joint marketing campaigns, content creation resources and equitable social media promotion, not just traditional media coverage.
• Implementing comprehensive NIL education programs: Offer workshops that directly address gender-based disparities in financial literacy, contract negotiation, branding strategies and legal rights, for both student athletes and coaching staffs.
• Strengthening institutional NIL infrastructure: Equip athletic departments with trained NIL administrators, general managers and compliance officers to support equitable deal facilitation and roster management across all sports, not just revenue teams.
• Structuring donor engagement more inclusively: Actively encourage booster support for women’s and Olympic sports by creating collective fundraising goals, incentive matches and branding opportunities that spotlight underrepresented teams.
• Embedding Title IX compliance at every stage: Require that institutional NIL deals undergo equity review for gender representation before approval and align NIL policies with broader Title IX audits to ensure systemic, not incidental, compliance.
• Expanding shared governance around NIL oversight: Engage faculty senates, equity officers and trustees in the design and review of NIL policies to ensure they align with broader institutional commitments to Title IX and educational access.

NIL offers unprecedented opportunities for student-athletes, but opportunity alone does not guarantee equity. Without intentional correction, the marketplace will reflect and reinforce historical biases. Colleges and universities must commit not merely to participating in the NIL era, but to shaping it in a way that honors the values of inclusion, fairness and educational purpose.