Each week this newsletter helps founders and investors navigate what's next in the athlete's economy by breaking down the latest trends across: NIL, Athlete-Creators, Women’s Sports, Emerging Leagues, Athlete-Investors and more.
This week you'll get to know 3 NIL startups empowering athletes as storytellers ⤵️
ByUs Media
ByUS Media is an athlete-led NIL content studio founded by former NFL player Chris Borland and Gen Z Sports Media Entrepreneur Olivia Hancock, a duo that shares a mutual passion for bringing athlete-driven storytelling to the world of college sports.
In their debut production, ByUS collaborated with Deja Kelly to produce NILOSOPHY — a show that brought together the biggest stars in NIL to discuss “money, impact and navigating a new era of college sports”.
ByUs' ethos as an athlete-driven company shines through their content & partnership approach, as Deja Kelly also became an equity partner in the company for her work with NILOSOPHY (via Boardroom).
Some of their Season 1 guests included Cameron Brink, Armando Bacot, Aliyah Boston and Jordan Chiles.
Through leaning into a Gen Z-first marketing strategy, ByUs successfully reached 1.5M across its social distribution within their first few months of production.
Learn more about ByUs here.
FanWord
FanWord is an NIL & athlete storytelling company focused on building solutions for athletic organizations that help their athletes grow, protect, and monetize their personal brands.
Christopher Aumueller, a former Nebraska Tennis player, founded the company in 2018 before NIL with a mission to help athletes be more than just numbers and stats.
Their core product, FanWord Stories, develops unique feature stories about athletes through a written, first-person perspective. Additionally, they create partner-branded landing pages to build & manage full storytelling series for their clients.
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In a post-NIL era, FanWord has adapted to help key stakeholders around the ecosystem (schools, collectives, brands, marketplaces, agencies) leverage FanWord's content and technology solutions for fundraising, sponsorships, or partnerships through 2 key offerings:
FanWord Stories
FanWord Directory
Some of their partners include:
Virginia Tech
Nebraska
SMU
Alabama
Memphis
Since its launch, Fanword has grown to support over 15,000 athletes grow their brands beyond the game.
Learn more about FanWord here.
Mercury
Mercury, The College Sports Co, builds brands, original content, talent and products that change the way fans interact with athletes & college teams.
After a decorated college football career, Adam Breneman has grown into one of the largest creators in football media with a social media following of 400K+.
In 2022 he joined Mercury as the Co-Founder and Head of Content to build with the Founder & CEO, Porter Grieve.
Since, the duo has built Mercury into a multi-dimensional company reshaping the college sports media landscape across an athlete-podcast network, school media brands, events, branded content and an NIL studio
A few of their athlete-podcasts include:
Next Up with Adam Breneman
Rock Chalk Unplugged with Mitch Lightfoot and Chris Teahan
2nd Wind Podcast withJames Was and Jarvis Miller
And school media brands include:
University of Kentucky
Clemson
Penn State
Since its launch has grown to 500K+ followers across its media properties and partnered with brands such as PrizePicks, Hello Fresh, Mascaped, FanDuel and more.
Learn more about Mercury here.
🫂 That’s a Wrap
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