A TikTok Ban Would Harm College Sports’ Have-Nots
Most amateur athletes can’t earn millions of dollars from their NIL, so they’ve turned to the platform’s one-of-a-kind algorithm to secure hundreds or thousands instead.
The kids may not be alright.
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images EuropeOn Friday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over whether TikTok should be banned in the US on January 19. Mia Manson, a pole vaulter at the University of Michigan, will be paying attention. She earns thousands of dollars (and merchandise) by posting videos to the addictive social media site for brands like Sweetgreen Inc. and the prebiotic soda brand Poppi. If the Court upholds the ban, she told me during a recent phone call, “it will definitely hit my income.”
She’s right, and she’s not alone. For tens of thousands of college athletes, most of whom play lower-profile sports (pretty much anything other than football and basketball), social media is an essential tool for monetizing a brief college sports career. According to Bloomberg, it accounts for as much 80% of college athlete earnings from their name, image, and likeness rights.
Even if TikTok remains, the threat to ban it reveals that — four years into the NIL era — assurances that athletes can finally get paid are falling short. Eye-popping headlines, such as recruits securing multimillion-dollar NIL packages, dominate college sports news coverage. But the disappointing reality for most college athletes is that they can’t earn money unless they hustle. If TikTok disappears, they’ll struggle to even do that.