MIAMI — The NCAA’s new name, image and likeness regulations had been in place for nearly a week and Sam Doerr, the new chief strategy officer for the Florida Panthers, was surprised no professional teams had figured out a way to get in on the action.
On Wednesday, his Panthers changed that and became, as far as he knows, the first major American professional sports team to unveil a specific NIL program. The FLA Athlete program is the first of its kind, and another major opportunity for South Florida college athletes to capitalize on the state’s new laws and NCAA’s new guidelines.
“We saw what was going on in the space,” Doerr said. “In the last 12 hours, or however long it’s been since we’ve gotten it out, we’ve had interest even from current partners about how they can get involved.”
The Panthers’ program follows a week of major NIL announcements across the Miami metropolitan area.
Last Thursday, Miami Hurricanes quarterback D’Eriq King became the early face of the NIL era when he inked multiple endorsement deals with Florida companies, announced a podcast with linebacker Ryan Ragone and launched an online NIL platform with Florida State Seminoles quarterback McKenzie Milton. On Tuesday, American Top Team, a Coconut Creek-based mixed martial arts team and gym chain, committed up to $540,000 in sponsorships to Miami football players and founder Dan Lambert launched Bring Back The U, a marketing company designed to link up local businesses with Hurricanes.
American Top Team’s announcement finally made an idea click into place for Doerr. He spent about 24 or 36 hours formulating some more specifics and Florida announced its initiative Wednesday.
Right now, the concept is simple: On the Panthers’ website, there’s a portal for athletes to enter their information — their school and sport, but also social media info — and connect with the local NHL team for promotional opportunities.
As of now, Doerr said he mostly envisions FLA Athlete as an extension of Florida’s already-existing social media-influencing program, “just switching it over to athletes.”
“However,” said Doerr, who joined the Panthers in April, “I think it can become even more than that.”
The simplest and easiest-to-implement partnership opportunities are social media posts, paid appearances and merchandise reveals. It’s easy to imagine an FIU Panther tweeting about student night at the BB&T Center or an FAU Owl showing up for an FAU alumni night in Sunrise, or a Miami football player posting a picture of himself in a jersey as part of an orchestrated reveal or even some Florida players and other local college athletes doing a video series together.
Doerr said he has already heard from some athletes and he hopes to first incorporate college athletes as part of the Panthers’ promotion for the 2021 NHL entry draft on July 23.
Miami is also clearly excited about another major local opportunity. Hurricanes football coach Manny Diaz tweeted about the program Wednesday, and Doerr said he quickly got a text from Alfonso Restrepo, Miami’s assistant athletic director for development, after the announcement.
Doerr said Florida is still formulating exactly what the program can entail beyond promotional agreements, but he also hopes the Panthers can effectively serve as a liaison between college athletes and other local businesses — similar to Bring Back The U. One possibility, Doerr imagines, could be a team sponsor partnering with an athlete for some sort of branded concession item Florida could sell at the arena.
“We’ll continue to evaluate,” Doerr said. “If there’s ways that we can connect these student-athletes with partners to make mutually beneficial introductions, we’re fine being the middle man, as well.”
Doerr said the Panthers don’t plan to limit their search to only football and men’s basketball players, either. Women’s athletes and athletes in non-revenue sports sometimes have massive social media followings or can reach niche audiences Florida knows it has struggled to penetrate.
“Olympic athletes, female athletes that have massive followings on Instagram and TikTok ... can cut into a space that, quite frankly, we probably aren’t capitalizing on enough,” Doerr said. “Don’t be shocked if we only have a couple football players and one basketball player, but we have five or 10 female athletes from Olympic sports that are really good with video content on TikTok.”
