News & Insights
Photo courtesy of: Greg Land
What if NIL is actually not the story, but the catalyst?
For the past several years, Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) has been framed as the defining disruption in college athletics. But if we focus too narrowly on NIL itself, we miss the more important shift underway.
SPOILER ALERT: NIL isn’t the story. It’s actually the mechanism revealing something deeper, a change in how capital flows through college athletics and how those decisions get made.
WHAT WE MEAN: What NIL has done is make visible tradeoffs that were always there. Funding has long been split across facilities, operations, and athlete support. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is how directly donors can now see the impact of their dollars, especially on performance and recruiting. That visibility makes capital allocation feel more immediate, and often more contested.
At the same time, institutions are facing new financial pressures tied to athlete compensation. The result isn’t that funding for facilities disappears, but that projects now have to work harder to justify themselves. It’s no longer enough for a venue to be necessary. It also has to perform. This is where NIL’s real impact shows up; not in endorsements, but in the financial assumptions behind whether a project moves forward at all.
Across college athletics, that shift is already visible. Venues are being treated less as programmatic needs and more as revenue-generating assets. Premium seating, sponsorship, and year-round programming are all playing a larger role, and increasingly, the venue doesn’t stop at the stadium walls.
The rise of the mixed-use athletic district is a direct response to this moment. By extending beyond the venue footprint, institutions can tap into retail, hospitality, and other uses that create more stable, diversified revenue. What has long been standard in professional sports is quickly becoming essential in college athletics.
One common misstep, though, is to respond too literally and design for NIL itself. SECOND SPOILER ALERT: NIL is an economic condition (not a facility type), and one that’s still evolving. Building around it directly creates risk.
A better response is flexibility. Venues need to support changing uses over time, from content to premium experiences to sponsorship, without being locked into a single model.
At the same time, another force is emerging: private capital. Schools like Kentucky and Utah are exploring outside investment to support both athlete-related needs and broader development. The takeaway is simple: there’s no free money. Any capital introduced has to generate a return, which only increases the pressure on venues to perform.
From this perspective, NIL looks less like a disruption and more like a catalyst. It’s accelerating trends that were already in motion and forcing institutions to be more intentional about how projects are funded and delivered.
At B&D, we see this moment not as a call for reaction, but as a call for discipline. The goal isn’t to build for NIL; it’s to build through it. If you are a venue leader, here are the top five ideas to keep in mind:
The institutions that will come out ahead will be the ones responding thoughtfully to what it’s exposed, a shift in capital, expectations, and the role venues need to play. Keep in mind that while NIL may fade from the headlines, the changes behind it won’t. And the next generation of college athletics venues will reflect that.
Aidan Lebow is an associate in Brailsford & Dunlavey’s Washington, D.C. office, where he advises clients across the K-12, municipal, and venues sectors. He specializes in market and demand analysis, using data-driven insights to inform project strategy, programming, and financial performance. Before joining B&D, Aidan worked at a leading real estate advisory firm in San Francisco, where he supported development projects across the country and helped shape investment strategies to maximize value and secure capital. He can be reached at alebow@bdconnect.com.
