Who Has the Reins? Incentives, Agents, and Agency in the NIL “Wild West”

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 19: Creative and Entertainment Industries

Abstract

This paper will examine the transformation in the American college sports labor market over the past 10 years, driven by several significant legal and institutional policy changes. These changes - the introduction of the transfer portal in 2018, House v. NCAA in 2021, and Alston v. NCAA in 2025 - considerably reduced the institutional control the NCAA and universities had over players' financial lives, finally allowing players to be paid for their labor and seemingly increasing their agency. However, the rapid formalization of this labor market came with no regulations protecting players from the enormous risk entailed by the influx of capital they received, paradoxically and meaningfully restricting player agency as their behavior can now be strongly incentivized to conform to market preferences. In particular, this paper will use mixed methods to investigate two things: the changes in market efficiency (under several operationalizations) induced by the transfer portal, House v. NCAA, and Alston v. NCAA, and the role of agents and "pseudo-agents," uncertified middlemen whose operation would be illegal in most other talent-labor markets but whose participation in this one appears extremely influential to the preferences and actions of players (the sellers) and universities (the buyers).

Author

• Edward Lucas Hock, University of Washington