In another first, Florida Panthers offer NIL deals to more than 200 FAU women’s athletes
The Florida Panthers are once again pioneering in the space of name, image and likeness agreements.
The Panthers offered a name, image and likeness contract to every eligible women’s athlete for the FAU Owls, offering more than 200 student-athletes an opportunity to partner with the NHL team for potential endorsement opportunities.
Florida is the first professional sports team to sponsor an entire women’s athletic program.
“We’re excited to announce this next stage of our ‘FLA Athlete’ program and bring an entire collegiate athlete women’s program into our Panthers family,” said chief strategy officer Sam Doerr said in a statement. “We look forward to supporting and collaborating with these talented female athletes in our South Florida community on innovative ideas and events in South Florida.”
This is the second landmark deal Florida has struck since the NCAA allowed college athletes to capitalize on their name, image and likeness (NIL) in July. In August, the Panthers inked an NIL deal with Miami Hurricanes quarterback D’Eriq King, becoming the first professional sports team to sign a college athlete to an NIL contract.
Florida also announced it has partnered with Dreamfield “as their official NIL marketplace.” King is a co-founder of Dreamfield, which provides a platform for college athletes to link up companies looking for marketing opportunities.
The Panthers have been a pioneer in the NIL space since the first month of this new era in college sports. In July, Florida launched FLA Athlete, which invited college athletes to apply for promotional opportunities with the team. The Panthers were the first major American professional sports team to launch an NIL initiative.
While King was the first to sign on with Florida, the Panthers has been looking for women’s athletes since the start, Doerr said in July.
“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.”
