NIL deal platform Opendorse shares key insights on today’s women college athletes

The GIST: Last week, collegiate NIL platform Opendorse shared data-backed insights on why brands should partner with women athletes. The platform points out only 8%-12% of House vs. NCAA settlement payments are allocated to women athletes across more than a dozen programs, totaling roughly $2M of a $20.5M maximum budget.

• Women are getting a very slim slice of the pie, yet as discussed in yesterday’s edition of The Group Chat and exemplified in this report, women athletes are more engaging on social media, outperform in NIL deals beyond what’s typical for their sport or school, and often beat male athletes in comparable sports in NIL marketing. Let’s look at the numbers.

⭐ Women athletes submitted 32.2% of the 500K NIL deal applications on Opendorse’s platform — and when football is removed, that share rises to 43.8%, signally huge growth potential. Additionally, women athlete profiles are 2.8% more optimized than their male counterparts, illustrating their increased NIL engagement and professionalism.

📱 Nearly half (48.9%) of DI women athletes are on TikTok compared to 34.6% of male athletes. Before this year’s March Madness tournaments, women ballers had a 3.2x bigger social following than the men’s side with over 21.7M followers combined on Instagram, TikTok, and X. This includes LSU star Flau’jae Johnson, who leads all women college athletes with 4.01M total followers.

🥎 College softball fans skew younger and more diverse compared to college baseball fans: 82% of college softball fans are under 34 years old and 28.6% are ethnically diverse. Among college baseball fans, these numbers are 42.9% and 16.8%, respectively.

💰 Brands are the most heavily engaged in NIL deals with women athletes in the South Atlantic region, spending $84.7M last year — consider Ally’s deep investment in the ACC and North Carolina and South Carolina. Overall, brands spent way more at Southern schools ($190.2M), far beyond the next-highest region (Midwest, $95.7M).

💤 The report also noted successful campaigns from brands that recently partnered with college women athletes, such as Epsilon’s March Madness NIL deals that celebrated Women’s History Month or Savage x Fenty’s campaign spotlighting athletes in loungewear and sleepwear.

• Epsilon notched 22.9M total media impressions, with 1.2M across Instagram and a 51% impression rate on the platform. Meanwhile, Savage x Fenty partnered with 106 athletes who authored 356 social media posts with a 66.5% view rate. That’s one way to win.