This is how Marquette All-American Tyler Kolek lands NIL deals, even during March Madness

During the Big East tournament earlier this month, Tyler Kolek sneaked in a quick visit to the gym at the Marquette men’s basketball team’s hotel in New York.

At the time, the All-American point guard was still working his way back from an oblique injury. But he wasn’t getting extra physical therapy. Kolek was decked out in terry fleece loungewear from SKIMS, and he had a fellow member of the MU program film him doing light exercises for a quick advertisement he could post on social media.

It was all in a day’s work for one of the faces of college hoops. Athletes once had to balance just sports and school, but name, image and likeness opportunities are now thrown in the mix since the NCAA allowed players to profit from NIL deals three years ago.

Casual sports fans might not know that college athletes can hire representation to help them negotiate business deals. That’s extremely helpful for a player like Kolek, whose profile gets hotter with every NCAA Tournament win but who also wants to keep his focus on helping the second-seeded Golden Eagles reach the Final Four for the first time since 2003.

Tyler Kolek signs deal with Priority Sports

During his first two seasons at MU, Kolek hustled up local business deals on his own. MU players also make money through the NIL collective Be The Difference.

But last summer, after a conversation with MU head coach Shaka Smart, Kolek decided to hire professional help for NIL deals. That allowed Kolek to keep more focus on basketball, or as Smart likes to say, “keep the main thing the main thing.”

"It’s kind of off my plate and I don’t have to be the one thinking about it," Kolek said. "They can just come to me with whatever they get or whatever they think works for me.”

Kolek settled on Priority Sports & Entertainment, a high-powered agency based in Chicago with a big roster of NBA talent.

The basketball world can sometimes seem small.

James Wang, Priority’s vice president of athlete marketing, was a standout player at Williams College. He was recruited there by Dave Paulsen, a Wausau native who coached Kolek at George Mason. Wang also had a good relationship with Michael Crotty Jr., another former Williams guard who was Kolek’s AAU coach.

“One of the fun things about our first meeting was how many things in common me and Tyler had,” Wang said. “It’s why we immediately vibed right out of the gate.”

Social-media followings are big for NIL deals

Kolek has a go-getter personality that doesn’t stop once he steps off the court.

“I think he was just looking to learn,” Wang said. “Learn more about it. What’s good about working with him is he’s not just ‘Oh, how much is that? What do I have to do?' And then yes, no, maybe after that.

“He takes the time to ask questions. ‘Where do these deals come from? What’s the reasoning behind it? What was our process in procuring it and why we think it’s a good fit for him?’ ”

Wang’s goal with Kolek was to push him among the more visible college basketball players. Kolek’s 23,100 Instagram followers trail big names like USC’s Bronny James (7.5 million), North Carolina’s Armando Bacot (165,000) and Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson (76,500).

“What I noticed is that the followings of these guys that play in the Big East are not even close to those that even play in the SEC,” Wang said. “Mostly because these schools don’t have football, the size of these schools are way smaller than the Big Ten or the SEC or ACC schools. Their followings are all a lot lower.

“I know a lot of other agents like to drive home their players’ social followings and how big they are. Well, we had to turn people’s attention away from that. We want him at a certain price point and it probably isn’t justified for a lot of brands that really care about the numbers.”

College athletes have been able to capitalize on NIL deals since July 2021.

“It opened up avenues for brands that probably never signed an athlete before to dip their toe in,” Wang said. “Because they found value in these highly, highly engaged audiences. I’d say there are more prospects out there.

“But, for the most part, a lot of these brands and agencies, especially since we’re targeting some of the bigger spenders here, the people we end up talking to on the other side of the table are pretty experienced in that sort of stuff. There are differences in pro-athlete marketing and NIL marketing, but at the end of the day athlete-influencer marketing has been around for decades.”

Kolek finds time to promote Mizzen+Main, Crocs and SKIMS

Wang helped land some big-name deals for Kolek, including menswear company Mizzen+Main, shoe company Crocs and SKIMS, which was founded by Kim Kardashian and is valued at $4 billion.

“We wouldn’t look at a campaign that signed 55 players from all these different sports and paid them $200 apiece to post on social,” Wang said. “It’s more about finding brands that are investing heavily in the sport.

“If it is Tyler alone, that’s great. If it’s with other players that are in college hoops, then for us we felt like it was important to be in campaigns that had other people he was on par with. So if you look at one of the deals that we did, Mizzen+Main, he was one of three guys. It was Tyler Kolek, it was (Duke’s) Kyle Filipowski, it was (Houston’s) Jamal Shead."

The SKIMS deal was interesting because the company had a larger campaign that included Dickinson, Kentucky’s Rob Dillingham, Arizona’s Caleb Love and Connecticut’s Donovan Clingan.

Kolek and MU teammate Kam Jones were part of a social-media campaign along with players like Bacot and North Carolina's R.J. Davis.

“There’s only a limited time you’re doing this (for college basketball players),” Wang said. “Your time in the spotlight is just so much shorter than when you’re in the NBA.

“Even though we would have loved for him to be part of the bigger campaign for SKIMS, are we going to turn down a pretty solid offer for not a whole lot of work with other guys that are in that that are high-quality players? But if he was in the NBA, we’d probably turn that one down. That’s a conversation that Tyler and I had and we came to that conclusion on it.”

College basketball players are most visible in the NCAA Tournament, but that is also when they are the busiest. There’s no time for hours-long video shoots.

“We try to streamline it,” Wang said. “These players know that when they say yes to a deal, they can’t give nothing. But in between nothing and spending hours upon hours on it, there’s a lot that we can do to make sure that he spends as little time doing it.”

That’s how Kolek ended up in the hotel gym in New York with an iPhone. He shot some raw footage and sent it to Priority. The agency quickly edited the video and shipped it back to post on social media.

The NIL work hasn't kept Kolek from performing on the court. He's notched 39 points and 22 assists in two NCAA Tournament games.

If MU keeps winning, the demand will keep growing.

“Tyler’s the best,” Wang said. “What you get on the court is also his approach from a NIL perspective. He’s not afraid of the work. He’s always down to do that extra marketing service if it earns him just a little more money.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Marquette's Tyler Kolek has NIL agent to help in NCAA Tournament