College NIL spending projected at $4.5 billion for 2026-27 season
Publicis Sports, a unit of Publicis Groupe, announced the launch of Tekta, a name, image and likeness business built to give brands a more structured path into college athlete endorsements. Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce will serve as an adviser, with his talent management firm, 3 Arts Sports, taking on the role of strategic operating partner.
College-level NIL spending is projected to reach $4.5 billion in the 2026-27 academic year, up from $3.6 billion the prior year, according to projections from Opendorse, a NIL technology platform. The NCAA opened the door for student athletes to profit from their likenesses in 2021, a change that has drawn in major talent agencies. WME’s parent company sold the sports agency 160over90 to Publicis earlier this year.
Publicis Sports CEO Suzy Deering described a market in which brands that have entered the space have run into repeated challenges, while others sit on the sidelines unsure how to participate.
“We have several brands that have entered into the space that we know have run into so many challenges,” Deering said. “And then we have several brands that are sitting on the sidelines, that want to enter the space, but don’t know how to navigate it.”
Deering contrasted the college NIL environment with what she described as the “buttoned-up, institutionalized dealmaking within the NFL and the NBA.” While many states require NIL agent registration, she said, enforcement is lax and there is no unified certification program, “which opens the field to practically anyone.” Young athletes, she added, often come “saddled with a high-school temperament and watchful parents,” and brands face a “challenging multitude of athletes, teams, schools, sports and agents looking for deals.”
Marketers, Deering said, often end up selecting talent based on “whether whatever agent is doing a good job.” Brands, she said, “have no way to then really monitor or measure the output, because they’ve had to go in with a patchwork approach, and it doesn’t always ladder to what their ultimate strategy is.”
Tekta’s pitch is to impose more structure on the market. Publicis Sports will work with clients on their strategies and then hand them to Tekta to identify promising athletes and schools based on those brand objectives. Kelce will advise at the strategic level rather than run day-to-day operations.
“Needless to say, he has his day job right now,” Deering said, “but he is very hands-on from an advisor perspective.”
Kelce already balances his NFL career with a podcast, a beer brand, a steakhouse and a sportswear line. His addition as an adviser sits alongside a broader build-out of agency involvement in college NIL dealmaking.