Female student-athlete participation in name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals saw a significant surge in the 2026 fiscal year, contributing to more than $300 million in multimedia rights partnership revenue, according to a report released by Learfield on July 28. The data highlights a growing landscape of NIL activities across collegiate sports, with women making notable gains in deal volume.
Learfield’s Impact Report showed that the number of NIL engagements involving female student-athletes increased by over 120%, rising from 2,136 in fiscal year 2025 to 4,772 in 2026. This growth was a substantial component of an overall rise of more than 5,000 NCAA student-athletes entering into NIL agreements during the same period.
In addition to the increase in deals with individual athletes, Learfield reported nearly doubling its multimedia revenue deals, with 1,700 new partnerships compared to just over 900 the previous year. These multimedia agreements span branding, media production, and promotional campaigns, playing a key role in the overall $300 million-plus revenue figure. While the company did not disclose specific revenue allocations among sports, it identified the top five sponsorship teams as football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball, and softball.
Learfield has also taken steps to promote NIL opportunities through initiatives like “local deal days,” leveraging high-profile collegiate programs such as Ohio State University and the University of Tennessee to showcase deal activations and athlete participation. The most common NIL activities for student-athletes continue to include representing brands as ambassadors, participating in photo and video shoots, amplifying content via social media, attending in-person appearances, and autograph signings.
The company highlighted partnerships with several major national brands, including T-Mobile, Marriott, Uber, and AT&T. Across these collaborations, Learfield facilitated 22 national deal partnerships involving student-athletes and represented 69 colleges and universities in those campaigns.
Overall, the report underscores an expanding commercialization of collegiate athletes' name, image, and likeness rights, with women athletes experiencing particularly rapid growth in deal volume, reflecting broader shifts in the collegiate sports marketing landscape.