Brands should get two kinds of rights for college athlete content: organic usage (reposting on your own channels, site and email) and paid usage (running the video as an ad). A common setup, and the one MarketPryce uses by default, is one year of organic use and 90 days of paid usage, refreshed with new content. Put the platforms, the time period and whether you can edit the video in writing before anyone films.
Usage rights are the permission to use a video after the athlete posts it. The athlete still owns their post and their name, image and likeness. You're buying the right to use that content for set purposes, on set platforms, for a set amount of time.
Without that permission, a great video lives only on the athlete's feed. With it, the same video can show up on your Instagram, your product pages, your emails and your ads.
This is the split that matters most, so it's worth getting clear on early.
Paid usage is shorter because ads wear out. After 90 days, fresh content usually beats running the same clip longer, and a refresh gives you new hooks to test.
If you're running ads through Meta, our guide to college athlete content in Meta partnership ads covers how partnership ads and whitelisting differ.
Not always. Some brands lock in paid usage on every video up front so they can run anything that takes off. Others start with organic only and add paid rights to the winners later.
Our take: ask for paid permission on every video at the start, even if you only run a few. Here's why. Organic performance is a good signal, but it's not perfect. In Proactiv's campaign, some videos that did just okay organically turned into the best performers in paid ads. Proactiv saw 2.5x ROAS running athlete-made content in its paid media. Here's how the Proactiv campaign worked.
If you have to go back and ask 30 athletes for paid rights one by one, you lose weeks. Getting it in the agreement up front keeps every video an option.
Keep it short and specific. These are the terms we see brands care about most:
Match the term to how you'll actually use the content. For most first campaigns, one year organic and 90 days paid covers it. You'll have repostable content for the year and enough paid runway to find your winners.
Asking for "perpetual, all media, worldwide" rights on day one usually backfires. It's a bigger ask for the athlete, it slows sign-ups, and most brands never use content that long anyway. Start with what you need and extend the videos that earn it.
Usually with a second deal. When a video is still working in ads at day 90, we go back to that athlete for new content and a fresh paid term. You get a new video to test against the old winner, and the athlete gets paid again for doing good work.
This also builds your bench. The athletes whose content keeps working become the group you renew monthly. Drink PHX runs a four-tier program where the best athletes move up to monthly retainers, and it's on pace for 1,000+ athlete posts and 10M+ impressions. Here's the full PHX funnel.
You do. The athletes worked with your brand, and you can keep working with them directly after a campaign or have us keep managing them. Many brands keep us on because tracking terms, renewals and permissions across 50 or 100 athletes is a lot of admin.
Ask for them. Screen recording a post off TikTok isn't good enough for ads. On MarketPryce campaigns, every video goes into a shared content library where your team can download the original files and grab what they need.
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, and every deal comes with the usage terms already built in.
We set the organic and paid terms, collect ad permissions from every athlete, put all the content in one downloadable library, track when paid rights expire and line up second deals for the videos worth extending. You get content you can actually use, without chasing signatures. If you want the full timeline, see how a 30-day college athlete pilot works.
Get both organic and paid usage. A common setup is one year of organic use and 90 days of paid usage, with the platforms and editing rights spelled out before the content is made.
No. Reposting and running ads are different permissions. You need paid usage rights, plus partnership ad permission or ad access, before putting spend behind an athlete's video.
90 days is common. After that, most brands refresh with new content from the same athlete rather than running the old video longer.
Do a second deal with that athlete. You get fresh content and a new paid term, and the athlete gets paid again.
Yes, if your agreement allows edits. Ask for the right to trim, caption and cut multiple versions so you can test different hooks.
Tell us your product and how you plan to use the content, and we'll set up the athletes and the terms. Start your campaign with MarketPryce.
