Investors Keep Grand Slam Track Alive With 8-Figure Lifeline
On March 20, most Americans didn’t know Amir Khan. By the next day, the McNeese State student manager—who went viral for leading his team onto the court during the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, sporting a boombox and rapping along to King Von’s “Back Again”—had a profile bigger than he could have dreamed.
He’d also pocketed more than six figures from roughly a dozen NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals. Many NIL deals with major brands take months to meticulously iron out. Yet most of Khan’s partnerships were turned around in less than 24 hours.
In a wide-open NIL landscape, the rush to capitalize on viral social media moments is a new priority for companies—and athletes and adjacent personalities like Khan—especially in moments like March Madness, where audiences are massive.
“Sometimes when you know, you know,” says Kyle Zorn, head of content at TickPick, which was the first brand to engage Khan after another video of his tunnel walkout antics circulated online in late February. “With Amir, we knew right away. You have to be different to stand out these days, and as a student manager with a big personality, he’s just that.”
Next comes the scramble. Zorn “slid into Khan’s DMs” from TickPick’s verified brand account, an approach he said tends to yield better responses—crucial, considering Khan’s manager, Reed Vial, told Front Office Sports he received 135 phone inquiries after McNeese’s upset of five-seed Clemson.
TurboTax, too, reached out via DM after keeping a close eye on the games in a “coworker group chat.” Contracts were quickly secured, and Khan filmed his collaboration with TurboTax in the early morning hours after his team’s win on March 20. The post went live the following day.
According to Caitlin Campbell, who leads Gen Z and NIL strategic communications for Intuit TurboTax, the entire process took less than 20 hours. “Amir was totally hustling,” she says. “The news cycle eventually moves on from moments like this, so it’s really impressive when kids recognize that and do all they can to take advantage of it.”
Buffalo Wild Wings CMO Tristan Meline tells FOS, “These types of partnerships are all about speed.” After the restaurant chain saw a clip of Khan’s first-round moment, they reached out “immediately” to get a custom branded boombox into his hands for McNeese’s next game against Purdue.
All of Khan’s partners tell FOS they accept a certain level of risk when engaging in this type of quick-turn work—namely that there’s no time for standard partnership processes like background checks. But more often than not, they say, the returns are worth it.
Buffalo Wild Wings says its deal with Khan garnered 4.2 billion earned media impressions. Several news outlets have mentioned TickPick, which also supported Khan via a branded boombox. The brand experienced a surge in follower growth on its accounts across several social platforms, too.
“Our March Madness deals are among our top-performing campaigns every year,” says TurboTax’s Campbell. “The positive sentiment we see in the comment section is far better than any other influencer program we run. People just really love hyping athletes—or in this case, student managers—up.”
Other rapid-turn NIL deals have come together throughout the men’s tournament. Maryland center Derik Queen hit a last-second shot to send his team to the Sweet 16 on March 23. Four days later, the Terrapin had signed an endorsement deal with Dairy Queen. A video of Queen eating a Blizzard posted to his X/Twitter account has garnered more than 100,000 views.
“Amir has opened a door and shown that you don’t have to be on the roster to get an NIL deal,” says Zorn. “If you’re on a college campus and able to create quality content and draw eyeballs, we’re always interested.”
Campbell agrees. “There are so many brands that are willing to put money into the NIL ecosystem these days. So, there’s more than enough opportunity to go around.”
