Key takeaways
Opendorse's NIL at 4 report forecast the NIL market at US$2.75 billion for 2024-25, revised up sharply from an earlier $1.67bn projection.
Roughly 82% of NIL compensation still flows through collectives, at about a 4:1 collective-to-commercial ratio — meaning the commercial brand-deal slice is the smaller, more competitive, and more durable one.
Commercial deals are the ones that outlast eligibility. Those are won by athletes brands can evaluate, not just find.
A social profile shows reach. A website shows evidence — audience composition, past activations, media assets, and a way to contact you that is not a DM.
The highest-value page on an athlete's site is usually the one fans never visit: the media kit.
Two different audiences, one website
An athlete's website serves two people who want completely different things.
A fan wants schedule, highlights, news, and somewhere to follow or buy.
A brand partnerships manager wants audience demographics, engagement rates, past campaign results, content examples, rights and exclusivity information, and a contact who will reply within a day.
Most athlete websites are built entirely for the first and accidentally exclude the second. That is backwards relative to where the money is.
Opendorse's NIL at 4 report — drawing on a dataset of 150,000+ athlete users, 100,000+ NIL activities and $250M+ in tracked compensation — forecast the market at US$2.75 billion for 2024-25. But it also found that roughly 82% of NIL compensation comes through collectives, at about a 4:1 collective-to-commercial spend ratio.
Collective money is tied to your program and your eligibility. Commercial brand money is tied to you, and it is the part that can continue after college, through a career, and into whatever comes next. Building for it is a long-term decision.
Brands run a diligence process. Your website either supports that process or forces them to do the work themselves — and there are always other athletes.
1. The media kit is the money page
Give it a real URL — /partners or /media-kit — and link it discreetly from the footer and the About page. Fans will never notice it. The people who matter will find it.
What belongs there:
- Audience size across every platform, updated quarterly, with the date shown
- Audience composition — age, gender split, top geographies. This is what actually determines fit, and almost no athlete publishes it.
- Engagement rate, stated honestly, with the method noted
- Past partnerships with what was delivered — three posts, an appearance, a signed-product drop — and results if you have them
- Content examples: two or three pieces of branded content you are proud of
- What you will and will not do, which saves everyone time
- Downloadable assets: high-resolution photos, logo files if you have a mark, a short bio and a long bio
- A named contact — you, an agent, or a parent — with an email and a response commitment
Put a "last updated" date on it. A media kit with six-month-old follower counts reads as neglect, and neglect is what a partnerships manager is screening for.
2. Stats and results, structured and current
For a competing athlete, verifiable performance is the foundation of the whole proposition.
- Season-by-season stats in a readable table, not a screenshot
- Personal bests and records
- Honours, selections, championships
- Current team, position, class year or career stage
- Where applicable, links to the official governing-body profile so a claim can be checked
Screenshots of stats are a mistake — they are unreadable on a phone, invisible to search, and inaccessible to screen readers. Use real markup.
3. Highlight video, delivered properly
Video is central and it is also the most common performance failure.
- Lead with a short highlight reel — 60 to 90 seconds. Recruiters and brands will not watch eleven minutes.
- Use a poster frame with click-to-play. Do not autoplay a full reel.
- Load YouTube or Hudl embeds behind a facade image that swaps in the iframe on click.
- Offer a longer full-game or extended reel as a secondary link for those who want it.
Google and SOASTA's analysis of real-world mobile data found bounce probability rises 32% as load time goes from one to three seconds and 123% by ten. An unoptimised highlight reel on a phone is precisely that failure.
4. Make the story specific
Every athlete bio says the same things about dedication and hard work. What differentiates is specificity:
- Where you are from and what that meant
- The injury, the transfer, the year that did not go to plan
- What you study, or what you are building outside sport
- Causes you are genuinely involved in, with evidence rather than a statement
Brands are increasingly buying narrative alignment, not just reach. A cycling brand wants the athlete who commutes year-round. A financial-literacy campaign wants the athlete who actually talks about money. Generic excellence gives a brand nothing to attach to.
5. A store, if you have demand for one
Merch is the most direct way to convert audience into revenue you keep. It is also easy to get wrong by over-building.
Start with print-on-demand and three or four items. Prove the demand before committing to inventory. Signed items and limited drops outperform generic branded apparel by a wide margin, because the value is scarcity and connection rather than the product.
If NIL rules or governing-body regulations apply to you, check them before selling anything that uses institutional marks. This changes by jurisdiction, sport and level, and it changes often.
6. Contact paths that separate the audiences
Three distinct routes, clearly labelled:
- Business and partnerships — to you, your agent, or a parent, with a response commitment
- Media and press — with the downloadable asset pack
- Fans — routed to social, or an email list, not to your business inbox
Merging these into one form means the partnership enquiry sits behind four hundred fan messages.
7. Own the domain, and keep it
Register yourname.com now, even if the site is one page. Domains matching an athlete's name become expensive or unavailable exactly when they become valuable.
A one-page holding site with a photo, a bio, stats and a contact address is genuinely enough to start. It can grow. What cannot be recovered is the name.
8. Keep it alive, or make it look intentional
The failure mode specific to athlete sites: built enthusiastically in one season, abandoned the next. A site with last season's stats and a two-year-old "Latest News" post is worse than no site.
If you cannot maintain a news section, do not build one. A well-made static page with current stats, a reel, a media kit and contact details, refreshed twice a year, outperforms an ambitious site that visibly stopped being updated.
Minimum viable athlete site
- Home — name, sport, position, current team, short reel, one clear action.
- About — the specific story, not the generic one.
- Stats — structured, current, with a link to the official profile.
- Media — highlights, photos, press coverage.
- Partners / media kit — the money page.
- Contact — three separated routes.
Six pages, buildable in a weekend from a template, and it will do more for commercial opportunities than another 10,000 followers.
For starting points, see the sports template category and entertainment templates for sports brands. Team and organisation sites have different requirements — see 14 sports website design inspirations. Athletes moving into coaching or training should read websites for coaches, and Framer fitness templates suit training-business builds.
Frequently asked questions
Does an athlete need a website if they have a large social following? Yes, if commercial deals are the goal. Social shows reach; a website shows evidence. Brand partnership managers need audience composition, engagement data, past campaign results, downloadable media assets and a reliable contact — none of which a social profile provides.
What is the most important page on an athlete's website? The media kit, at a URL like /partners. Fans never visit it, but it is the page a brand's partnerships team uses to decide whether to make an offer. It should carry audience demographics, engagement, past partnerships, downloadable assets and a named contact with a response commitment.
How big is the NIL market? Opendorse's NIL at 4 report forecast US$2.75 billion for 2024-25, revised up from an earlier $1.67 billion projection. Roughly 82% of that flows through collectives at about a 4:1 collective-to-commercial ratio, meaning brand deals are the smaller but more durable share.
What should an athlete media kit contain? Audience size and composition per platform with a date, engagement rate with its method stated, past partnerships and deliverables, two or three branded content examples, what you will and will not do, downloadable high-resolution photos and bios, and a named business contact.
Should an athlete's website autoplay their highlight reel? No. Use a poster frame with click-to-play, and keep the primary reel to 60–90 seconds with a longer version linked separately. Autoplaying video is the most common reason athlete sites are slow on the phones where most visitors arrive.
Last updated: 17 August 2026.
Sources: Opendorse, NIL at 4 annual report (July 2025; dataset of 150,000+ athlete users, 100,000+ NIL activities, $250M+ tracked compensation) · Google / SOASTA mobile bounce-probability analysis
