RALEIGH, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — North Carolina’s State Board of Education members are putting the nix on name, image, and likeness payments to high school athletes.
The move comes more than a year after the N.C. High School Athletic Assocation allowed NIL deals, and three years after the NCAA altered the college sports landscape by given them the green light.
These highlight-reel-style videos are common to see on Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter. They’re young athletes working to be noticed statewide and nationally. But just a few years ago, it wasn’t usual to scroll past one.
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Blake Thompson with a grassroots basketball tournament provider Teammate Basketball says the introduction of NIL has changed how youth sports are presented to the public.
“Now you’ve got these very curated, very carefully managed social media pages, particularly on Instagram for the young players,” he explained. “We see this regularly. We’ve got 12-year-old athletes that have 15- to 20,000 followers on social media and are doing individual workouts on their social media platforms or putting their game clips up. They’ve got to be talented to get that attention and maintain that attention.”