A 30-day college athlete pilot is a short test where you send product to a group of vetted athletes, they create and post content, and you see what works before committing to anything bigger. Athletes opt in within about 5 days, content goes live over the next 2 to 3 weeks, and 70% to 80% of athletes who get product end up posting. MarketPryce runs the whole thing, so your only job is shipping product.
Because a year-long contract with a channel you haven't tested is a hard sell internally. A pilot answers the real questions fast: Will athletes actually post? Is the content good enough to run as ads? Does it move sales, sign-ups or views?
Thirty days is long enough to get real content and real numbers, and short enough that nobody has to bet the quarter on it. It also beats the old way of doing NIL, which meant negotiating one athlete at a time through agents and waiting weeks for a single post.
Here's how a typical pilot runs, day by day:
Most pilots use somewhere between 20 and 150 athletes. Some brands go as high as 250. We usually recommend at least 30.
The math is simple. If 70% to 80% of athletes post, 10 athletes gets you about 7 or 8 posts. That's not enough to tell a good hook from a lucky one. With 50 to 100 athletes, you get dozens of videos from different schools, sports and personalities, which gives you a real read on what your audience responds to.
A bigger group also gives you a bigger bench for later. After the pilot, roughly the top 20% to 30% of athletes are the ones worth keeping around.
Very little. Here's the full list:
We handle recruiting, vetting, messaging, coaching, deadlines, follow-ups, athlete payments and reporting. That's the part that usually eats a marketing team's month.
We lead with context, not control. Instead of word-for-word scripts, athletes get a short brief with the key points (taste, ingredients, how it fits their routine) and example videos filmed by our in-house content coach.
That matters because most college athletes aren't professional creators. They follow direction well, but they need to see what good looks like. The coach gives them that, and the content still sounds like them.
If your category has rules, like supplements that can't make health claims, we put those guardrails in the brief and you can approve content before it posts.
Athletes are paid after they post, not upfront. Most pilots work in two steps:
That structure means your budget goes to athletes who actually deliver, and the best performers earn more because their videos get more views.
Some brands also run the best videos as Meta partnership ads during or right after the pilot. Proactiv saw 2.5x ROAS running athlete-made content in paid media.
It depends on the goal, but here's what a few MarketPryce brands have seen:
Not every pilot is a home run, and that's the point of running one. You find out what works with real data before you scale.
If the pilot hits your goals, most brands move to an ongoing monthly program. A common setup: keep seeding new athletes each month to find fresh talent, and put more budget behind the top 20% to 30% from the pilot. Some brands send their best athletes into retail stores or campus events next.
If you want the bigger picture on working with athletes, our complete NIL playbook for brands covers it.
We've run 50,000+ NIL deals for 350+ brands, including Nike, Dr. Squatch, DoorDash, Revlon and SoFi. Our network has 6,000+ vetted college athletes, so we can match you with the right ones in days, not weeks.
You ship product. We handle the athletes, coaching, approvals, payments and reporting, and you get a library of content plus a clear read on what's working at the end of 30 days.
Usually about a week from kickoff to product shipping. Athletes opt in within about 5 days, you get a shipping list on day 6, and content goes live over the next 2 to 3 weeks.
Typically 70% to 80% of athletes who receive product post content. Athletes are paid after they post, so you're not paying for content you never get.
Yes. You see a shortlist of athletes with their profiles and past content before anyone gets product, and you can approve or swap anyone on it.
You get usage rights, typically one year for organic use and 90 days for paid ads. Longer paid usage usually means a new deal with that athlete for fresh content.
It depends on how many athletes you include and whether you want paid usage rights. Most of the budget goes straight to athlete pay. Tell us your goal and we'll put together a quote.
Tell us what you want to test and we'll send you a shortlist of athletes that fit. Start your 30-day pilot with MarketPryce.
