After years of battles in court, state legislatures, and Congress, a new era has arrived: NCAA athletes can now profit from the use of their name, image, and likeness.

The NIL industry could be worth billions of dollars, experts estimate.

• Star players in the Power 5 conferences could earn up to $1 million in social media endorsements alone, according to ESPN.
• Women’s sports athletes, from volleyball players to gymnasts, could earn anywhere from $10,000 to $400,000 annually, according to AthleticDirectorU and Opendorse.

The governance structure for the deals, however, is still a mess. NIL rules are currently determined by a patchwork of state laws, a temporary NCAA waiver, and individual school rules.

The NCAA is lobbying for Congress to pass a uniform federal law.

“The NCAA is at the table only because it’s been hauled, kicking and screaming, here,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said last month.

Jackson State defensive end Antwan Owens was among the first college athletes to sign an NIL deal, per Sports Illustrated. He inked a deal with black-owned hair product shop Three Kings Grooming at midnight in NYC.

Miami Hurricanes quarterback D’Eriq King also struck a midnight deal, reportedly signing a $20,000 endorsement deal with moving company College Hunks Hauling Junk.

ViacomCBS closed out its upfront advertising sales and attributes much of its growth to sports.

The network, which is still catching up with giants like Disney in the streaming wars, secured an estimated $2.03 billion to $2.66 billion for its linear primetime programming, up by as much 6% from last year.

CBS broadcast Super Bowl LV in February, driving its first-quarter ad revenue to $1.8 billion — up 40% year-over-year. Even though the Big Game will be on NBC next year, the NFL was still a key driver for CBS’ ad sales.

The company will pay more than $2 billion annually to broadcast NFL games on CBS and Paramount+ from 2022-2033.

In addition to the 100-plus football games CBS has on its schedule, the network emphasized its soccer, golf, and college football and basketball programming.

It’s been a banner year for advertising sales across the board.

• Fox reported sales were up around 20% for linear and digital.
• Disney had double-digit gains, primarily due to live sports.
• NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia each said this year’s upfront was the most successful in company history.

ViacomCBS’ revenue grew 14% to $7.4 billion in the first quarter. The media conglomerate recently raised nearly $3 billion to grow Paramount+’s global reach.

This week, Bentley offered a glimpse of its future.

The England-based Volkswagen subsidiary placed second in the Pike’s Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains using a proprietary blend of biofuel. The car took the top prize for alternative-fuel vehicles, outpacing the Tesla Plaid, among others.

Bentley plans to use the impressive finish to propel a loftier goal: becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

The luxury carmaker is scheduled to roll out hybrid editions of all its models by 2023, its first consumer electric model by 2025, and electric versions of all models by 2030.

Though Bentley will exit the GT3 series, it plans to stay involved in racing, with an eye toward clean-energy contests such as Formula E and Extreme E. 

Seemingly every luxury carmaker is making an electric shift.

• Lamborghini is spending $1.8 billion to develop hybrid and electric cars.
• McLaren will stop developing petrol engines by 2030 and enters Formula E next year.
• Ferrari plans to offer electric cars by 2025.

Bentley said its sales are up around 30% over 2020, which was already a record year for the company. Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Porsche also had record sales in 2020, with Porsche bringing in $34 billion in revenue.

Wells Fargo says Gap’s upcoming Yeezy line could bring in almost $1 billion in sales next year, far ahead of the $1 billion Gap was aiming for by 2025.

A previous report by Swiss bank UBS estimated that Yeezy’s separate collections with Gap and adidas were collectively worth between $3.2 billion and $4.7 billion.

• 64% of pre-existing Gap customers said they intend to buy items from the Yeezy collaboration.
• 23% of the people who don’t shop at Gap said they plan to purchase items.
• Yeezy’s first product with Gap, a $200 blue nylon puffer jacket, sold out in hours.

Yeezy signed its shoe deal with adidas in 2013 after leaving Nike the previous year. The line has been a smash success, bringing in nearly $1.7 billion in revenue last year.

Kanye owns 100% of Yeezy and earns 15% on all shoe sales from its adidas line. The deal runs through 2026.

West has publicly lobbied for a more significant position at both Gap and adidas.

Last July, at a South Carolina rally for his short-lived presidential campaign, West told the crowd, “I am not on the board at adidas, I am not on the board at Gap, and that has to change today or I walk away.”