SBJ Unpacks: How Vanderbilt’s Candice Storey Lee became AD of the Year

Tonight in Unpacks: Vanderbilt AD Candice Storey Lee has reshaped the department and is seeing success on and off the field, leading to her being named SBJ’s AD of the Year, reports SBJ’s Ben Portnoy.

Also tonight:

• UFC pulls off first White House sports event with Freedom 250
• Philadelphia delivers for Ecuador fans despite tough loss
• ‘Rules of the road’ coming for prediction markets
• Op-ed: Rise of the athlete creator brings legal and business implications

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour looks at the positive start to the World Cup, the UFC’s White House event, Florida’s plan for renovations to its football stadium and more.

There’s a vividness in Vanderbilt Athletic Director Candice Storey Lee’s retelling of the night the Commodores slayed the giant.

Temperatures dipped into the mid-60s, giving Nashville a fall feel on that early October 2024 evening. A heavier skew of gold and black littered the stands at FirstBank Stadium, a change from nights of seasons past, in which attendance might well have been counted by hand, and home games were in name only.

As the clock ticked down, Lee stood on the sideline next to 1997 Vanderbilt grad and news personality Willie Geist. They peered around the stadium. It’s what they’d always hoped, a football environment worthy of the school’s conference affiliation. Reality proved almost jarring.

3, 2, 1. The clock continued to tick. Zeroes hit. The gold-and-black storm began.

Students flung themselves from the nearby seats. A few climbed the goalposts. They wobbled, and wobbled, and wobbled. Finally, they fell as an army of undergrads hauled their trophy toward the honky-tonks of Broadway.

Vanderbilt 40, Alabama 35.

“A few years ago, we sat at the table almost apologetically, or maybe just happy to be there, in some ways,” Lee conceded. “No one ever said that, but I think our actions may have demonstrated that. The reality is that I have — from the very beginning, and got criticized for it, especially early on — talked about what we were focused on, what we want to be.”

The 2024 win over Alabama, the Commodores’ first over the Crimson Tide in 40 years, was a start. Consider it a proof-of-concept moment for Lee, 47, an administrator hired amid the COVID-19 pandemic by a school that was part of the SEC but never really competitive.

“You have to be willing to withstand the laughter, the ridicule, the fickleness,” Lee continued. “You have to be able to withstand that. You have to be resilient enough to get through that, to get to the other side. There’s been a lot of that. But of all the things that had to change, the internal narrative had to change first.”

The Commodores football team enters the fall off its only 10-win season in school history. Vanderbilt’s basketball teams won first-round NCAA Tournament games under head coaches hired by Lee. Hundreds of millions of dollars in facility projects have been completed during her tenure. And then, of course, there’s the more than $300 million fundraised through athletics, and the university’s broader efforts to modernize Vanderbilt’s infrastructure.

That lengthy recent résumé is why Lee was named Sports Business Journal’s 2026 Athletic Director of the Year. But those closest to her will tell you the accomplishments are about more than a singular moment or deal that crossed the line.

Vanderbilt is no longer just a willing participant. The Commodores, Nashvillians assure, would welcome needing to fish a few more goal posts out of the Cumberland River.

These are the costs of success.

“That’s always been the knock, right?” said Vanderbilt women’s basketball coach Shea Ralph, a former longtime assistant to Geno Auriemma at UConn. “It was like, ‘The investment in athletics will never be what the investment in academics is.’ Candice has completely changed the narrative with what she’s done. And by doing that, she’s completely changed the athletic department and how people view our sports.”

Of course, it hasn’t always been this way.

Head football coach Clark Lea situated himself behind a lectern in the belly of the College Football Hall of Fame as dozens of rows of sportswriters largely ignored that Vanderbilt’s head coach had, in fact, entered the room for his annual SEC media days address.

The entire exercise of media days is often met with its share of eyerolls, as only a handful of frothy headlines make for fun, final offseason fodder before camp heats up across the conference.

Lea spoke in 2022 on a day when attention was transfixed on Nick Saban, Mike Leach and Shane Beamer. Then Lea began his spiel.

“We know, in time,” he said, “Vanderbilt football will be the best program in the country.”

A few scribes looked up. Others muttered snarkily under their breath. Did he really just say that?

Lea was dead serious. Lee wasn’t surprised.

There’s a shared respect between AD and football coach. Both are Vanderbilt alums, albeit that’s a bonus. Lee made clear when she hired Lea from Notre Dame that he wasn’t getting the job because of what his degree said, but rather because he was the best fit.

There were moments of doubt, Lea says now. A pair of 2-10 seasons flanked a 5-7 campaign over his first three years on the job. Murmurs percolated that Vanderbilt’s football job could open, again.

Lea responded with a 7-6 season in 2024, capped off with a win over Georgia Tech in the Birmingham Bowl. Quarterback Diego Pavia returned last fall, finishing runner-up in the Heisman voting, and guided the Commodores to a program-record 10 wins.

“I never lost confidence in Clark,” Lee said. “I told him from the very beginning … ‘This department is on a parallel track with this football program.’ He’s the first coach I hired, and we were going to make significant investments there, and we needed to.

“Our baseball program had set the standard, and I wanted to get everybody else up to that standard. I talk about that freely and openly. Starting with football, that was important.”

Such success breeds outside interest. Lea’s name was floated for a half-dozen openings around the country. Vanderbilt administration stepped up when others came calling. Neither coach nor athletic director would disclose exact numbers, but they’re not concerned about Vanderbilt’s ability to compete in a world where football rosters are steadily climbing into the $30 million to $40 million range.

“Opportunity gives you a chance to evaluate where you are and really take a good look at where it’s headed and what’s the best thing,” Lea said. “Because this isn’t charity work. This is your profession, and you want to win. I want to win a national championship.

“As I’ve gone through that process, the thing that I come back to over and over again is the people. This is not necessarily about the place for me. A lot of people think that because I’m an alum from Nashville that this would be where I choose to be. It’s not that. I’m way too competitive for that. But the people that are ahead of me, Chancellor [Daniel] Diermeier and Candice, it’s the best chancellor-AD tandem in the country. They literally are superheroes as they’re doing their jobs and the way they clear the path ahead of us and, again, allow us to have this aggressive vision for sustained success.”

Judging an athletic director’s prowess in 2026 can be a subjective matter. Fundraising is a key cog. Facility efforts are another. Coaching hires? At least publicly, that’s all any general fan really cares about — and Lee has nailed most every one in her tenure.

Talk to the coaches across Vanderbilt’s campus, and they echo a similar refrain about their boss. ”No” is never the immediate answer to a request. It’s something closer to, “If that’s important to you, let me see what’s feasible.”

Men’s basketball coach Mark Byington says Lee has an uncanny ability to read when he might need something before he even asks. Lea cherishes the mentorship conversations they’ve had over their five-plus years together. Ralph said Lee will swing by her house to take her to lunch if she’s had a tough day.

As for having a former basketball player as a boss?

“People ask me the way that you asked — ‘How is that?’” Ralph said, glancing over her glasses with a smirk. “I love it. She’s smart. She also knows her lane and knows mine, but she’s at every game. She’s in our locker room. She was in tears with some of the wins we had this year, and I’m in tears, and then our kids are in tears.

“But she is personally invested, and who wouldn’t want that? — and I told her, in dire need, if I need a post player, I’m going to slap a wig on her, and we’re just going to figure it out.”

The relationship Lee enjoys with her head coaches is part of the secret elixir cooked up across Vanderbilt’s campus over the last two years. The hires of Lea, Byington and Ralph, among others, have led to one of the most successful on-field spells in the school’s existence.

Football reached the top 10 for the first time since World War II. Byington became the first coach in program history to win 20 games in each of his first two campaigns. Ralph has won 20-plus games in three straight years and guided the Commodores to their first Sweet 16 since 2009.

Elsewhere, the department took off.

The baseball team, under legendary head coach Tim Corbin, won the 2025 SEC Tournament and received the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. Women’s soccer, too, won an SEC Tournament title. Women’s tennis reached an NCAA Super Regional for the second time in three years, while men’s tennis and golf each signed the No. 1 recruiting class in the country over that span. Volleyball, too, returned to the school for the first time in 45 years.

“For me, I just didn’t want to be in the SEC or just be in Nashville,” said Byington, who was hired in 2024. “I had to be at a place where I knew we could be successful. When you’re around her, she has a shared vision of a plan of success, and she was very open about some of the things that weren’t successful before and some of the reasons why. Then, she had a clear plan on what she wanted to do in the future.

“Once I was aligned with that, then I really wanted a job. I was like, ‘If this is my boss and this is the passion that she has and she wants it as bad as I do, what perfect alignment.’”

“What stood out was her belief in Vanderbilt’s potential,” added Diermeier, reflecting on his hiring of Lee in 2020. “She understood the institution as an alumna, but she also challenged us to think bigger about what Vanderbilt athletics could become.”

Before Vanderbilt’s thrilling homecoming overtime win over Auburn in November, Lee took a handful of her former Commodores teammates on a tour of the school’s new athletic facilities.

Several of her college pals hadn’t been on campus in years. Their eyes widened with each step.

This wasn’t the Vanderbilt they remembered.

“Sometimes you don’t experience it the same way when you’re there every day,” Lee said. “When you take a step away, and you come back and you’re like, ‘Wow.’”

Facilities have long been a challenge for Vanderbilt throughout the college football and basketball arms races of the 2000s. Previous leadership had fixations on modernizing and updating. Few had the administrative support to do so.

Lee and Diermeier’s visions have aligned over the last five years. That shared approach is, at least in part, why Commodores coaches have been armed with a slew of new facilities to break in.

FirstBank Stadium received a $300 million facelift. The north end zone project saw additions of premium hospitality areas, a video board, premium seating and loge boxes. A visiting team locker room renovation and expanded concourses were also part of the build. The south end zone, meanwhile, added 20 suites and more than 1,000 club seats as part of the Commodore Club, field club, loge boxes, living room boxes and more.

Lee has also overseen the recent completion of the Huber Center, a basketball operations center and practice facility, and renovations to the Vanderbilt Legends Club, home to the Commodores’ men’s and women’s golf teams.

Hawkins Field, the longtime home of Vanderbilt baseball, is in the midst of its own renovation that’s slated to be completed over the coming year or two. The project will touch everything from a new weight room and pitching lab to fan-facing improvements, such as a Party Deck 360 bar and the Taste of Nashville Market with grab-and-go options.

“What stood out was her belief in Vanderbilt’s potential. She understood the institution as an alumna, but she also challenged us to think bigger about what Vanderbilt athletics could become.”

—  Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier

“Facilities are one piece of a larger strategy, but they matter,” Diermeier said. “Candice helped generate the support necessary to move those projects from aspiration to reality, positioning Vanderbilt for long-term success.”

That broader strategy centers on a handful of major fundraising campaigns that touch athletics and the university. The school completed the first phase of its Vandy United Campaign, a $300 million fundraising effort announced in 2021 that was kickstarted by $200 million in donations, including $100 million from the university, $90 million from anonymous donations and a $10 million lead gift from trustee John R. Ingram.

Lee also recently announced the $50 million Anchored for Her campaign centered on women’s sports at Vanderbilt. A new $300 million phase of Vandy United is planned to help fund a Football Experience Center, a new soccer and lacrosse stadium and a reimagined Jess Neely Drive, which runs through the heart of the university’s athletics neighborhood.

“We’re not going to take shortcuts,” she said, well aware of the time it’s taken to flip Vanderbilt’s department. “I would say all the time in our staff meetings, ‘If I told you I’ve got this brand-new, beautiful, elegant house for you, I built it in one day and it’s yours — do you want it?’

“Even if it’s free, you better not take that house. You better take the one that can withstand bad weather that is built according to codes, that I got a permit for, that we followed a blueprint and it all makes sense, so when you move into that house, you’re moving in with confidence.”

Vanderbilt was, at best, a fixer-upper when Lee landed the athletic director job in 2020. It’s evolved into a case study for departmentwide success in a time when financial pressures are only growing.

Diermeier speaks of a vision for the school that extends beyond Nashville. Lee shares similar sentiments about Vanderbilt’s wider mission — succeeding academically, athletically and beyond.

These days, there’s evidence it’s feasible.

Lea, who signed five-star quarterback Jared Curtis during the most recent cycle, conceded five years ago he might not have been able to swing for a player of Curtis’ caliber.

“When you start talking about recruits that come with Jared’s stature, you’re going to need some proof of concept,” he said. “And it’s not just about winning. It’s about energy and environment and this ingrained belief in community that aligns to allow you to have a chance to reach a little deeper into that prospect pool.

“As we’ve been at it, the ripple effect of our effort has transformed the perception of the program. As the perception has changed, it’s allowed us to have a little further reach.”

Lee puts a broader spin on the sentiment.

“There’s a bigger story there about just how this university is taking off,” she said. “I’m so proud that Vanderbilt Athletics is a part of Vanderbilt’s skyrocket story.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — UFC pulled off the first pro sporting event at the White House with enthralling knockouts and almost no major logistical issues, but in a polarized country the impact of the card will likely be debated for some time.

The UFC Freedom 250 event on the South Lawn of America’s most famous landmark was an unprecedented event that drove huge interest and endless opinions across the country. The card featured seven fights -- fewer than a typical event -- but every one of them ended with a knockout or TKO. That’s the first time that’s ever happened in UFC history and indicates that UFC’s matchmakers delivered despite heavy criticism from some corners of social media in recent months that the card didn’t fit the bill of such a historic sporting event.

The card was shown exclusively on Paramount+, something that also drew some criticism on social media on Sunday night. At the fan fest across the street from the White House, UFC President and CEO Dana White said that 60,000 people attended Saturday’s ceremonial weigh-ins and that almost 200,000 went through the turnstiles over the course of the two-day weekend. About 4,300 people were expected at the temporary venue on the South Lawn, and the seats appeared to be close to full when the card started.

The card drew huge reaction. Nine of the top 30 trends on X on Sunday night were about the UFC event, including seven of the top 10 as of 10:49pm ET. At his post-fight press conference, White said UFC beat its all-time sales record for merchandise at an event by double, and that he had just spoken with Paramount Skydance Corp. CEO David Ellison, who was “going crazy” because it was a “monstrous” night for Paramount+. Noting that the expected rain ended up splitting the White House on either side, White added, “You couldn’t have had a better night -- it was absolutely perfect.”

PHILADELPHIA — Despite all the drama and consternation that have surrounded host city preparations for the World Cup, Philadelphia has operated with a quiet confidence in the years leading up to the megaevent. This weekend, it was easy to see why.

Against the backdrop provided by the city’s host committee, tens of thousands of yellow-clad Ecuador fans -- along with a much smaller contingent supporting the Ivory Coast -- delivered the kinds of scenes local leaders envisioned when they sought to host the World Cup.

For many, Sunday started at the city’s FIFA Fan Festival at Lemon Hill in Fairmount Park. While the event centered on a large public viewing area that erupted when Curaçao equalized against Germany -- the tournament’s Cinderella team would go on to lose 7-1 -- the million-square-foot festival offered a range of attractions, including soccer clinics led by MLS’s Philadelphia Union, a playground, local food trucks and, of course, an enormous FIFA Store filled with tournament merchandise.

Five FIFA sponsors -- Bank of America, Michelob Ultra, The Home Depot, Kia and Diageo’s Casamigos tequila brand -- are running large-scale activations at the festival along with host city supporter Visit PA. Comcast, a Philadelphia host city supporter, is unable to promote its consumer-facing Xfinity brand within the Fan Festival due to a potential conflict with FIFA sponsor Verizon.

More than 40,000 attended the Fan Festival on Sunday, and it has drawn over 100,000 since its opening last Thursday.

Outside the main gate, the host committee built the Philadelphia Phestival Marketplace to offer local businesses and organizations the opportunity to get in on the action. Among them was the American Federation of Teachers, which handed out books about soccer to children to promote reading.

By midafternoon, the party had shifted closer to Lincoln Financial Field, temporarily renamed Philadelphia Stadium. With more available parking than at most other World Cup stadiums, some fans chose to tailgate. Many others took advantage of regular-price subway service to the area, along with free rides home underwritten by Airbnb.

Just over two weeks after Comcast Spectacor and The Cordish Companies cut the ribbon on their more than $20M expansion of Stateside Live, the dining and entertainment complex was packed with thousands of fans hours before kickoff. While some had purchased premium Match Day Experience packages offered by the host committee, many more filled both the indoor and outdoor spaces as the afternoon match between Japan and the Netherlands was shown on big screens.

While Stateside Live is inside the Philadelphia Sports Complex, it is outside the stadium perimeter, meaning it did not receive FIFA’s “commercially clean” treatment. The Philadelphia host committee, for example, welcomed VIP guests and host city supporters at the Miller Time Beer Hall, named for a top competitor of FIFA sponsor Anheuser-Busch.

The match itself drew a crowd of 68,274 -- 50 short of the capacity figure released by FIFA before the competition. Seemingly resigned to a scoreless draw, the largely pro-Ecuador crowd was stunned when Ivory Coast attacker Amad Diallo netted the game-winning goal in the 90th minute.

Moments after the final whistle, Ecuadorian flags were repurposed as umbrellas as lightning flashed and the skies opened.

The 267-page rules proposal that the CFTC released Wednesday regarding prediction markets largely deals with a “public interest” test that the commission wants to apply to contracts now traded in areas once declared out of bounds for the suddenly popular derivatives.

As part of 2010 regulatory reforms that expanded CFTC oversight of the contracts created as hedges against risks such as drought, Congress approved a “special rule” allowing the agency to prohibit those in five emerging areas that it saw as problematic, or even toxic: terrorism, assassination, war, gaming and illegal activity.

Turns out those categories weren’t specific enough for some.

The CFTC’s proposal, which now will take public comments for 45 days before finalizing new rules, went a long way toward banning the sort of contracts that drew public outcry when they surfaced in recent months.

Markets that settle on whether a world leader is out of office by a certain date, for example, would be out because they could include assassination. Those written to specify electoral defeat, resignation or natural death as reasons for the change would be allowed. It worked through similar explanations suggesting more specific guardrails around markets that could be seen as involving terrorism and events of war.

The proposal also defined “gaming” in a way that supports its intent to ban contracts based on casino games, such as blackjack and roulette, but continues to allow most that present as bets on sporting events, including the most common player props.

The proposal would take down some of the low-hanging fruit that U.S. leagues and players unions have been most vocally opposed to: contracts involving officiating, injuries, fights and the ball-or-strike betting that resulted in criminal charges against two Cleveland Guardians pitchers. Results of individual shots in basketball and plays in football also would be out.

Other than that, the environment would remain unchanged for Kalshi and the legion of new competitors vying for the 39% of U.S. adults residing in states that haven’t legalized online sports betting, such as California and Texas.

An idea of how the CFTC intends to approach the myriad permutations of sports contracts that could come across its transom as predictions morph ever closer to bets — with odds replacing prices on offerings that already include point spreads, over-unders, player props and parlays — can be found in the appendix of the new rules proposal, in a summary of factors to be considered in a public interest review.

“The Commission believes that event contracts based on the aggregate outcomes of professional or collegiate sports events, based on objective and verifiable settlement criteria, listed by prediction markets that maintain appropriate surveillance, trading prohibitions, and coordination with relevant sports governing bodies, are, depending on the full record and the Commission’s evaluation of all relevant factors, unlikely to be found to be contrary to the public interest.”

The rightful ‘cop on the beat’

In an interview discussing the rules proposal Wednesday afternoon, CFTC Chair Michael Selig outlined the thinking behind the agency’s approach to a sports segment that makes up more than 80% of event contract volume on its regulated exchanges.

“We’ve laid out the factors we’re going to consider, assuming it gets finalized,” said Selig, who has emerged as the nation’s de facto sports betting czar as the commission’s chair and its only sitting voter. “We believe it does weed out a lot of the edge-case concern products out there; some of the types of injury contracts or other things that are against public policy. But it does allow for sports derivatives contracts to be traded on our markets.”

That’s not a surprise. Selig has been a vocal proponent of the agency as the rightful “cop on the beat” to regulate the contracts, which have upended the state-by-state path to sports betting legalization that began eight years ago when the Supreme Court overturned Congress’s prohibition of sportsbooks outside Nevada.

In the new rule proposal, the CFTC defends that position. It starts by tracing the wildfire emergence of the contracts to a 2024 district court ruling that cleared the way for Kalshi to offer election contracts banned by the CFTC under the Biden administration.

Selig argues that by delivering blanket rejections under a framework that broadly allowed the CFTC to refuse all gaming-related contracts — and banishing Polymarket from the U.S. — the previous administration left a vacuum that the district court ruling has allowed Kalshi to fill.

“There was this rush to sue and push things out of the country,” Selig said, “but not to set clear rules of the road that are workable that allow for the product to exist within a reasonable and rational regulatory framework that protects investors. … We’re here to set rules and make sure we’re protecting investors, protecting consumers and making sure the markets have integrity.”

The proposal builds a case that by allowing the CFTC to apply a public interest test to gaming-related contracts as part of its 2010 Dodd-Frank reforms, Congress conveyed sweeping authority for it to both allow contracts based on sports outcomes and deny those built around casino games. It artfully — or perhaps perplexingly — defines gaming to include both baccarat and basketball.

Applying the public interest test

Given the latitude to consider sporting event contracts through a public interest lens, it concludes that almost all of the game and player prop contracts that the exchanges now commonly offer pass the test. It specifically cites contracts based on “final scores, point differentials, win-loss results, tournament advancement, individual or team statistical performance or season long performance metrics” as likely to pass public interest tests. It also finds those contracts “unlikely to raise … particular manipulation, settlement ambiguity, and information leakage issues.”

It reached the same conclusion about most player props, describing the risk of players intentionally underperforming as “detectable.”

An interesting aside, considering the debate that was waged around whether to require sportsbooks to use official league data, is the commission’s acknowledgement that “a variety of data sources may be appropriate for the settlement of event contracts.” It said it “does not intend to overly restrict prediction markets’ flexibility to determine which sources should be used in settlement.”

While Selig said the CFTC was not proposing a requirement that exchanges enter into information-sharing agreements, such as those the regulator struck with MLB and the NHL and is working on with other leagues, the proposal does reiterate guidance that it gave earlier this year when it encouraged them to coordinate with leagues and governing bodies on contracts prior to listing.

It also suggests that “information sharing agreements between prediction markets, the commission, and the relevant sports integrity monitoring organization may aid prediction markets in monitoring sports event contracts for manipulation, insider trading and other compliance issues.”

“We were given specific authority to review these products and discretion to reject them in certain cases and we’re going to use that authority,” Selig said. “And we’re going to put out really clear standards for how we’re going to evaluate the products going forward. We believe that’s how those markets should be regulated, and we’ll do so a soon as these rules get finalized.”

The public comment period ends July 27 — about one month before the opening of college football.

For decades, the business of sports operated on a familiar model: athletes performed on the field, court or track, while leagues, teams, broadcasters and sponsors controlled the machinery of media rights, branding and monetization. Athletes were the talent, but rarely the owners or architects of the platforms that made them stars.

This model is undergoing a structural reconfiguration.

We are in the age of the “athlete creator” — a new generation of competitors who are also media brands, content creators and distributors, owners of significant intellectual property and entrepreneurs. Athlete creators are building direct-to-fan businesses that shift control away from traditional institutions and toward individuals, and promise value far beyond athletes’ playing careers.

Why Now?

Athlete branding and endorsements are not new. From Michael Jordan’s iconic Nike deal to Serena Williams’ portfolio of endorsements, star athletes have long been valuable marketing partners. But a new and rapidly accelerating structural change — the growth of the digital economy, the expansion of name, image and likeness opportunities and the fragmentation of media rights — is empowering athletes to operate less as spokespeople and more as independent economic agents.

NIL Regulation

The NCAA’s adoption of a uniform NIL policy in 2021 meant that, for the first time, college athletes could monetize their personal brands — signing partnership and endorsement deals, creating sponsored content and leveraging their athletic skills to build independent revenue streams outside of academic scholarships — without forfeiting their eligibility. This policy change, reinforced by proliferation of state-level NIL laws, spawned a college NIL market that has grown exponentially to a projected $2.75 billion for the 2025-2026 academic year.

The effect on student athletes has been profound. Young athletes enter college with social media fluency and established social followings, brand deals and a business mindset once reserved for established professionals. Many student athletes actively cultivate and curate their public brand, manage partnerships and view NIL activity as both a source of current income and future career value. In some markets, athletic programs and recruiters factor social media presence and marketability into their overall talent evaluation.

The Creator Economy

Simultaneously, the rise of the creator economy powered by social platforms and other digital tools has given athletes the infrastructure to build, engage and monetize audiences directly and at scale. Many athletes no longer see themselves as mere endorsers. Instead, they aspire to own their media, shape their narratives and build equity in businesses that outlast their playing careers. This means moving from one-off endorsement deals to entrepreneurship, equity stakes and owned platforms. Subscription models, media channels and merchandise drops are now as important to an athlete’s income as shoe deals or team contracts. LeBron James’ SpringHill Company, Tom Brady’s Religion of Sports and Naomi Osaka’s KINLÒ are just a few high-profile examples of athletes building media, production and consumer brands on their own terms.

And while marquee players might command the biggest opportunities, roster and emerging players and athletes in more niche sports with marketable personas, community influence or social media followings can also take advantage of the creator economy. The growing popularity of women’s sports, notably college and professional basketball, has also contributed to the transformation of sports media and marketing.

The creator economy presents new opportunities and risks for athletes and their advisers, requiring different thinking around traditional legal and business considerations, as well as the dynamics of digital platforms, the enhanced reputational risk of direct-to-fan communication and nuances of entrepreneurial dealmaking.

NIL Compliance and Contract Structuring

NIL rules vary by state, league and institution, creating multilayered compliance requirements that have real world consequences for athletes. The NIL market is still evolving, which further complicates dealmaking. Agreements need to be structured to maximize value and protect eligibility without running afoul of existing rules while also incorporating terms that enable long-term brand-building and revenue creation for the NIL market of the future.

IP Protection

As athletes build brands and content platforms, their IP assets become increasingly valuable. Protecting athletes’ rights in their trademarks, copyrighted content and NIL requires licensing strategies that maximize revenue streams from these assets, while also retaining as much control as possible over their use.

Digital Media and Platform Agreements

In the expansive creator universe, negotiating with digital platforms and sponsors requires fluency with a new set of relationships and agreements not typical to traditional media. Athletes and their advisers must vet agreements with other influencers, creators and talent; manage rights clearances for content; and ensure athletes retain a fair share of ownership revenue from content hosted on third-party platforms.

Advertising Rules

As athlete creators increasingly act as brands and direct-to-fan marketers, compliance with advertising regulations previously handled by sponsors and advertising agencies become the athletes’ responsibility. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations and guidelines governing truth in advertising, disclosures and endorsements, state consumer protection and deceptive practices laws, and platform-specific advertising rules all come into play. Failure to comply can result in regulatory scrutiny, financial penalties, lawsuits and loss of credibility with fans and marketing partners.

Reputation and Crisis Management

The greater audience reach and visibility of the direct-to-fan model exposes athletes to more public scrutiny and amplifies reputational risk. Athletes and their advisers must be prepared to address defamation and invasion of privacy, social media missteps and other crises swiftly and strategically.

Equity and Entrepreneurship

Some athlete creators are seeking equity in startups, founding their own companies or investing in media ventures, requiring athletes and advisers to structure equity deals, negotiate joint ventures and consider issues around entity formation, governance and investment risk.

Tax and Wealth Planning

Success in the creator economy means expanded and varied income streams — from endorsements, digital platforms, e-commerce and investments, among others — that require more sophisticated tax planning. Athletes need to work closely with a team of experienced lawyers, financial advisers and wealth management professionals to optimize tax efficiency and support long-term wealth creation.

The business of sports is being restructured, creating opportunities for athletes to move beyond traditional roles as spokespeople, influencers and endorsers, to gain greater control over their brand and to capture a larger share of the value they generate, on and off the playing field. For athletes and their advisers, success in this reconfigured model requires moving beyond the traditional confines of contract negotiation and endorsement deals, to become strategic partners in brand building, digital monetization and wealth creation.

Doug Masters is managing partner and Seth Rose is a partner in the Chicago office of Loeb & Loeb.

• The U.S. Open returns to Shinnecock Hills this week, and it will do so with a smaller capacity on site on Long Island than in recent years in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, reports SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.
• MOGL, an AI-powered athlete influencer marketing platform, is introducing a new feature, Athlete Paid Social, for brands to run campaigns directly on athlete social accounts, similar to programmatic media buying, reports SBJ’s Joe Lemire.