This startup helps college athletes monetize their personal images

Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 8:32 PM2 min read

In light of the recent National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston Supreme Court ruling, the issue of monetization of student athletes has entered the national spotlight once again. With the NCAA and student athletes and their advocates engaged in a tenuous battle for rights over athlete brand images.

Enter INFLCR (pronounced influencer), a startup focused on student athlete branding. Founded in 2017, INFLCR aims to help make brand deals more accessible to student athletes and help them understand new name, image, and likeness (NIL) legislation.

The company describes itself as a “one-stop-shop to have unparalleled access to digital content, top-notch education, social media value metrics, and NIL monetization opportunities.” It recently partnered with Influential, an influencer marketing company, to add social media insights to the app and deliver college athletes greater access to brand connections.

“We’re a software as a service company that provides software directly to the institution who pays us annually for a license,” CEO Jim Cavale told Yahoo Finance Live. The software is then provided to the school's teams and athletes. INFLCR uses this operating system to allow athletes access to content like pictures and videos of the athletes playing or practicing.

“All that content, whether it’s shot by the school or the media, is sorted through facial recognition, jersey number recognition, that we’ve built through artificial intelligence, Cavale said. “And that allows the student athlete to walk out of practice, walk out of workouts, walk out a game, with their INFLCR app having all the new content that’s been shot of them."

With the content stored on their phones, student athletes then have the option to share it on social media and track metrics and fair market value.

“That’s what we’ve always done: Help student athletes build their value through the provision of content and metrics,” Cavale said. “And with the NIL era coming, it’s shifted, we’re providing features for them to now get educated through short videos and articles from subject matter experts around NIL.”

College athletes won a victory in the legal fight for compensation on the use of their images earlier this week in the NCAA v. Alston Supreme Court case. The court affirmed the lower court rulings and ruled against certain NCAA restrictions on athlete compensation.

In the short-term, the ruling will make it more difficult for the NCAA to limit the education-related benefits that student athletes receive. In the long-term, however, the decision could open the door for other lawsuits to challenge the NCAA’s payment model.