How African athletes can play to win "The Money Game"

I attended the premiere of "The Money Game" in New York last night. This six-episode docuseries explores how Louisiana State University (LSU) and its athletes embraced the 2021 policy which opened the possibility for student-athletes to benefit from their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). The school's roster of current athletes and recent graduates speaks for itself: Angel Reese, Olivia Dunne, and Flau'Jae Johnson all became global branding powerhouses while wearing the purple and gold colours.

While NIL deals aren't yet available to international athletes due to student visa restrictions (although LSU is among the schools that is pushing for exemptions), programs such as LSU are building opportunities to equip international athletes with specific toolkits to manage brand partnerships in their home countries. This has prompted me to think further about the marketability of African athletes and how the development of content and of audiences can lead to lucrative partnerships.

• Developing more local marketing capacity around sports.

It is known that Africa has struggled with an image bias. Other industries and circles of influence have pushed hard to reverse the tide and “change the narrative”. While we have had many success stories in recent years, there has been very little content produced around these stories and as such very little possibilities for brands to build around these stories. To remedy that, we need to build local marketing know-how to develop content that is relevant for our local audiences and to tailor marketing services to the reality of our athletes and teams. Most marketing agencies work on a retainer base which can represent a hurdle, however there are other models that can be adopted : for instance, part of the brand’s budget could be dedicated to recouping the marketing agency’s costs. Not having enough local marketing capacity is depriving our ecosystem of an important revenue source. It is also creating a huge gap in the market that international agencies are beginning to capture and profit from.

• Building an audience and becoming international brands' access to African audiences.

In a previous article, I wrote about how athletes can avoid being victims to the incompetence of sports federations by securing their own private sponsorships. To elaborate, I believe that the exposure gained on global platforms such as continental or world competitions can help teams and athletes become their own brands and create an important leverage with local authorities. Athletes can go even further by positioning themselves as conduits that have the attention of local audiences which some international brands are desperate to capture properly. This is influencer marketing 101.

• Educating brands on the power of partnerships

This last point was inspired by a comment from Taylor Jacobs, Associate Athletic Director/ NIL & Strategic Initiatives at LSU. During her panel, she spoke candidly of the work the school had to do with brands to educate them on the opportunity to collaborate with athletes. It felt reassuring to know that even in the strongest sports market that is the United States, brands still had a thing or two to learn about sports : there are brands, like Nike, that have of course developed their own track record on how to collaborate with athletes. The NIL policy has opened the doors for any businesses, even local lawyer practices as seen in the documentary, to partner with student athletes. This is proof that African athletes and teams do not have to start with chasing the big brands yet, but can build best practices around their branding and marketing with the local private sector first.