FOS and Facebook Team up to Deliver Athlete Marketing Essentials: NIL Certification, a Free Online Learning Resource Focused on Social Media for College Athletes, Athletic Departments and Sports Professionals

 The Six-part “Athlete Marketing Essentials” Program Is Available Now

FOS and Facebook have teamed up to launch Athlete Marketing Essentials: NIL Certification, a free, six-part online learning program. The course aims to equip college athletes, college athletic departments, and sports professionals with Facebook and Instagram best practices to help them maximize their presences and earning potential on each platform in the new NIL era. The second installment of the highly acclaimed Front Office Sports Essentials series is available now on the FOS website.

“On Facebook and Instagram, athletes have access to technologies that help them build their personal brands, affect social change, and drive their long-term business opportunities at unprecedented scale”

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The interactive course features experts from Facebook and Instagram breaking down the vast array of tools and services available on their platforms to help athletes grow their audiences, distribute content, and generate meaningful revenue. Topics covered include athlete safety on social media, building blocks for personal branding, content creation, sponsorships, commerce and monetization. All registrants who complete the program will receive a verified digital certification badge.

“The historic NIL ruling has been a longtime coming and we are thrilled to partner with Facebook for this important installment of Front Office Sports Essentials focusing on athlete marketing,” said Adam White, CEO of FOS. “Facebook and Instagram are massive global social media destinations for athletes and their legions of fans, and this partnership creates the resources needed for anyone in or around the college sports space to maximize the freedoms allowed under the NIL advancement.”

“On Facebook and Instagram, athletes have access to technologies that help them build their personal brands, affect social change, and drive their long-term business opportunities at unprecedented scale,” said Dev Sethi, Instagram Head of Sports Partnerships. “We’re proud to partner with FOS to deliver a curriculum that covers each of these topics and helps set up college athletes for success for their four years in school and the next 40 after that.”

On July 1, an unprecedented advancement in the college sports model finally became a reality as college athletes were granted permission to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). In this new era of NIL, the influence of college athletes will extend beyond the bounds of the game to the feeds of Facebook and Instagram. Athletes are the most-followed sports accounts on both platforms with data showing that more than 570 million people follow an athlete account on Facebook and more than 490 million people follow one on Instagram. Each platform provides unique opportunities to level the playing field for athletes who seek to become content creators and monetize these endeavors. Executives from Facebook and Instagram, including key members of the Sports Partnership team, will provide valuable guidance to take advantage of this new era in collegiate athletics.

“The beauty of our platforms is that you don’t have to be a star quarterback or point guard to win in the NIL era — you just have to be creative and consistent,” said Nick Marquez, Facebook North America Team Sports Partnerships Lead. “Through this course, we’ll share what a winning strategy looks like, which we hope will help college athletes at every level and in every sport maximize their business opportunities on our apps.”

Launched in February 2021, Front Office Sports Essentials is a series of interactive courses designed to help professionals stay on top of today’s ever-changing sports landscape. The first edition, Sports Marketing Essentials, featured a partnership with Pepsi Sports and was carefully curated by FOS, Pepsi executives and their agency partners at Genesco. The eight-lesson course explored Pepsi’s overall sports strategy and how they bring brands to life at marquee events including The Super Bowl and NBA All-Star Game. The inaugural Front Office Sports Essentials installment, which was a finalist for a 2021 Digiday Award for Best Branded Content Program and is still available to complete, thoroughly educated more than 8,000 users on how brands leverage athletes, the rising importance of esports and gaming, the importance of data and how the sports industry has pivoted in a post-COVID environment.

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