Reporter | Wang Yi
Benny Snell became very popular when he was in the high school football team.
Not long after entering the University of Kentucky, Snell was selected into the team. After three years of college league competition, he has become a legend in the school team, with the number of charge yards (3873) and touchdowns (48) both the first in the team history. He will also be in the 2019 NFL Draft.
However, Snell's popularity comes not only from his athleticism. After joining the school team, his social media followers have increased by 15 times, and his current number of followers on Instagram and Twitter has reached 145,000.
Although the NCAA stipulates that student athletes are not allowed to conduct personal brand marketing, and prohibits athletes from endorsing commercial products or accepting financial support from sponsors, it does not restrict students from "attracting fans" as athletes on social networks. The influence of social networks is precisely an important component of these athletes' future money-making ability.
Snell has gathered more than 100,000 fans and established a personal trademark, personal exclusive hashtag #SnellYeah, and the personal website SnellYeah.com.
"I know the trick here," Snell said in an interview earlier. "As long as there are fans who want to take a photo with me, I will definitely not refuse, because they will usually post photos afterwards, so that more people will know me."
Former NFL scout Jim Nagy said in an interview with Bloomberg that he has indeed observed that the "Internet celebrity" attributes of student-athletes have been increasing in the past few years. By establishing personal brands in the early stages, athletes "can leave and monetize their social reputation after becoming professional athletes, instead of waiting until they are recruited by professional teams to start accumulating fans."
Of course, students may not be able to accurately grasp the interests of netizens, so they need the help of professionals.
In 2017, former college baseball player Jim Cavale founded INFLCR. Having experienced the problem that college athletes cannot accept commercial sponsorship and endorsement, Cavill came up with a way to shorten the monetization cycle of athletes, which is to make them become "Internet celebrities" during college. INFLCR usually cooperates with universities and charges $10,000 to $50,000 a year to provide athletes with excellent social media content resources and operational guidance, such as providing users with high-quality professional photography pictures. Like the company name pronounced influencer, Cavill hopes to help these young people become influential figures early. At the same time, universities can also build the overall reputation of the school by promoting their players.
The University of Kentucky, where Snell is located, cooperates with INFLCR to help students and athletes on campus to operate social media.
Under the INFLCR business model, students establish personal trademarks and website ownership while they are on school, and when they are selected to leave school, these resources will be converted to personal ownership of the students.
However, giving students personal freedom will not affect the school's benefit from it. If a school has many highly-known "Internet celebrity" athletes, then once they are selected by a well-known team, this will be a blessing to the school's reputation. At the same time, many popular seniors will also attract potential newcomers to choose to join the school.
INFLCR cooperates with more than 30 universities and thousands of athletes in the United States. One of their star clients is Duke University basketball star Zion Williamson (Zion Williamson). Although Williamson has not entered NBA yet, he has already landed in 3.2 million Instagram followers. Since 2018, Williamson's release frequency, content diversity and graphics quality have all reached the same level, and behind this, experts like INFLCR may be indispensable.
Many student-athletes, like Snell and Williamson, realize that they have great potential on social media.
Sports Business Journal analyzed the social media usage status of 100 popular rookie candidates before the 2019 NFL Draft and found that 61% of them were Twitter certified users and 82% were Instagram certified users. Facebook may not be as popular as before among young people, and only 8% of rookies registered and certified users.
. These people use social media frequently. 57% of people post content several times a week, 33% post 1-2 content every day, and 10% of rookies have to post more than 3 posts a day.
For these rookies, social media is not a platform for completely expressing oneself, but more like a space for displaying an ideal public image. After analyzing the content of these people, SBJ found that most rookies spoke very restrained in topics such as vulgar language, explicit pictures and videos, speeches on political and social sensitive issues, and drug alcohol , especially in alcohol, drugs and pornographic content. Nearly 80% of people have completely kept silent. The way
uses social media reflects a rookie's IQ and EQ, which can even determine their future/money prospects.
Snell found that before the draft, he found that a lot of his knowledge about him came from his own social media.
At the same time, Snell has signed a contract with sports brand Under Armour, and his popularity on social networks is also one of the reasons why he has helped him win a big contract early.
The performance of athletes on social media has become an important indicator for sponsors to measure their endorsement qualifications. Therefore, rookies are well versed in social media early, and the soaring number of fans can become the benefits they get faster.
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