Some players have achieved successes in the NIL landscape, but future challenges remain.
In the age of name, image and likeness compensation in the NCAA, winning often comes with financial perks, not just championship banners. The biggest payouts are largely concentrated in the highest-revenue sports, most notably football and men’s basketball.
Northwestern women’s lacrosse, the university’s most successful program with eight national titles, is an NIL wild card.
The ‘Cats won a national championship in 2023 and reached the title game again last season before a heartbreaking 14-13 loss to Boston College. This year, No. 3 Northwestern has surged to a 9-2 start, with big wins over Notre Dame, Syracuse, Maryland and USC and the only losses coming to No. 1 Boston College and No. 2 North Carolina. Despite challenges, some of the team’s on-field success has translated to the NIL sphere, an area that is rapidly growing at Northwestern.
For Northwestern student-athletes, most NIL income comes from TrueNU, a collective that creates partnerships between charities and student-athletes. TrueNU raised approximately $1.6 million in revenue in 2023, according to its tax Form 990, available through ProPublica. Now, Jacob Schmidt, TrueNU’s executive director, said the organization’s revenue has reached more than $20 million since its launch in fall 2022. Schmidt also said TrueNU raises at least 95% of NIL income at Northwestern, and a “handful” of lacrosse players participate in a lot of events with the organization. Schmidt declined to comment on how much NIL income goes to lacrosse players specifically.
“We’ve done deals with at least one athlete from all 19 of our programs,” Schmidt said. “Almost 400 athletes have done an NIL deal with TrueNU over the past few years.”
Northwestern lacrosse players can also make money through the Northwestern NIL Store, which sells branded apparel, jerseys and custom gear. As of March 28, all but seven Northwestern lacrosse players have profiles on the website. And deals don’t stop there. For example, first-year attacker Aditi Foster recently partnered with the clothing brand Hollister to promote their products through Instagram.
“When we first started, there was only one apparel partner, and it was Fanatics,” said Brad Bauer, the general manager of Northwestern’s official NIL program. But Bauer said Fanatics was unwilling to work with highly successful Northwestern sports like lacrosse, field hockey and softball, so instead, he decided to establish a partnership with Campus Ink to run the NIL Store and include all programs.
In addition, Bauer said the NIL department has almost finished a project to produce licensed NIL trading cards for lacrosse and softball, in partnership with ONIT Athlete.
“Equity is important,” Bauer said. “We never like to do anything for one gender sport that we don’t do for another one.”
Still, challenges persist in the development of major NIL opportunities in women’s lacrosse. According to the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis from the U.S. Department of Education, Northwestern paid approximately $29 million in expenses for sports outside of football and basketball between Sept. 1, 2022 and Aug. 31, 2023. During that same period, it obtained approximately $17 million in revenue from those sports, according to the report.
Lacrosse-specific data was not available, but the charts appeared to indicate that football and men’s basketball were the only revenue-positive sports during that time. Rob Rotering, a Northwestern graduate and athletics department donor, said the amount of revenue in women’s lacrosse might limit the NIL opportunities players could pursue.
“What is driving NIL are the major revenue sports, which are football and basketball,” Rotering said. “That’s not just true at Northwestern. That’s true NCAA-wide.”
The upcoming House v. NCAA settlement adds an additional piece to the NIL puzzle. On April 7, there will be a final approval hearing to confirm the terms of the settlement. If approved, the settlement would pave the way for individual universities to begin revenue-sharing with student-athletes, with an estimated cap of $20.5 million per university in 2025-26, according to the NCAA website.
Crucially, any school that opts to participate in revenue-sharing cannot do so on a team-by-team basis, according to the website. In other words, schools that participate must abide by the terms of the settlement for all sports.
Despite this, Mitch Gilfillan, an NIL expert and attorney at Quinn Johnston, said the revenue-sharing model could place sports that lose money under greater examination.
“I do think these sports, specifically the Olympic sports, will be under greater scrutiny at their own individual schools,” Gilfillan said. “Every university is weighing a cost-benefit analysis of what they can and cannot afford.”
Gilfillan also said athletic directors across several universities have sent letters to alumni and fans warning of potential changes. Potential cost-cutting measures, he said, could include cutting roster spots or limiting funds for travel, food, equipment and/or healthcare training staff.
As for Northwestern, Bauer said most athletes won’t receive major revenue-sharing benefits, making other commercial NIL opportunities all the more important.
“The sports that generate the most revenue — understandably so — are going to be the ones that receive the bulk of that revenue back,” Bauer said.
So what would an increased focus on commercial NIL look like going forward?
“I don’t have a firm answer for that because we’re still figuring it out,” Bauer said. “It’s really a question of resources and institutional priorities.”
For Northwestern lacrosse, along with thousands of other Division I programs, the net impact of the upcoming House settlement remains murky. Still, Bauer said he thinks NIL will always be a part of Northwestern’s vision.
“I don’t think we’ll ever say that NIL is not a priority,” he said. “It’s always going to be important. The question is, ‘How much can Northwestern afford to make it a focus versus other commercial revenue streams and other areas of effort?’”
Regardless, Gilfillan said NIL collectives, operating separately from revenue-sharing, can continue to have an impact if they make an effort to do so.
“I think each individual sport still has the capability to either fundraise or to provide NIL opportunities for student-athletes if their athletic department doesn’t have the funds to do it,” he said. “That takes work, and it takes a group of volunteers. It takes a group of people that are strongly invested into those specific programs to continue to make sure that they’re successful.”