NC State among schools getting ahead on name-image-likeness services

Changes to the NCAA’s name-image-likeness rules are imminent, with pending legislation in several states set to grant athletes in those states the ability to earn money off their likenesses beginning in July.

More sweeping acceptance of modernized NIL rules are assured, on account of recruiting—can’t have a few select schools having this kind of selling point while others don’t.

While North Carolina is not one of the states with an NIL law due to take effect this summer, NC State is among the power-conference schools that have contracted with a third-party service to help its athletes market themselves.

NC State agreed to a five-year contract with INFLCR in December; INFLCR provides, among other things, an app that players can utilize to create their own social media content, with a library of photos and graphics at their disposal:

From their website:

INFLCR’s platform helps clients like NC State send internal media and national photography content to personalized galleries for each of their athletes, coaches and other brand ambassadors.

Those athletes and brand ambassadors are able to access their content galleries through the INFLCR mobile app, and can then share the content to their personal social media accounts.

After the fact, NC State is able to measure the increased audience engagement coming from the much-larger collective audience of those athletes and brand ambassadors.

NC State plans to use this approach to bolster their online presence in a way that impacts event attendance, recruiting, fundraising, and other strategic goals.

A records request by Andy Wittry found that NC State’s contract with INFLCR (maybe they can buy a couple vowels now) is worth north of $155,000 for the life of the deal. At that link you can see the contract values of other agreements signed so far.