0:01

NPR. This

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is the Indicator for Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma. And I'm

0:14

Weyland Wong. We are still in the thick

0:17

of Olympic season. The Paris

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2024 Paralympic Games kicked off this week,

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and the athletes that competed at the Olympics earlier

0:23

this summer are back home now. Maybe taking a

0:26

victory lap. Or a victory nap. That's

0:29

what I would do. I

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would get a gold medal in napping. Some

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of these athletes are entering or returning to

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college in the U.S. Maybe

0:38

with a higher profile post-Olympics. Now,

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in a previous era, these college Olympians wouldn't

0:43

be able to capitalize on their fame by,

0:45

say, signing endorsement deals with companies. But

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college athletes can do this today.

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That's because back in 2021, the

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National Collegiate Athletic Association loosened its rules

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around how athletes are allowed to

0:57

make money off their image. This

1:00

is a big boon for students like Frederick

1:02

Richard. He's a gymnast at the University of

1:04

Michigan, and he was part of the U.S.

1:07

men's gymnastics team that won a bronze medal

1:09

in Paris. Oh, he also has almost

1:11

850,000 followers on TikTok. You

1:15

know, the TikTok world, the social media world, it's

1:17

like, wow, you can reach new people that have

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never seen your face. The

1:23

NCAA rule changes opened up a whole

1:25

new level of economic opportunity for athletes

1:27

like Frederick. Today on the

1:30

show, we look at how the Paris

1:32

Olympics have boosted the earning potential for

1:34

college athletes, especially in sports that historically

1:36

have been kind of overlooked. And

1:38

Frederick tells us how his business life

1:40

has changed after the Olympic Games. It's

1:49

not every day you get to talk to

1:51

a famous athlete like Frederick Richard. So given

1:53

the opportunity to ask a question of an

1:55

honest to God Olympian, I did not throw

1:58

away my shot. changes

4:00

were too new for many Tokyo Olympians

4:02

to really take advantage of the opportunity.

4:05

But they came just in time for

4:07

Frederick, even if he didn't immediately recognize

4:09

how significant these changes would be. When

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it happened, it's before I even got into college, so I

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was like, oh, I don't really know what

4:16

this means, but cool. I'll get an extra couple bucks, you

4:18

know what I mean? As a high

4:20

school student in Massachusetts, Frederick had already built

4:22

up a following on social media for his

4:25

gymnastics videos. He entered the

4:27

University of Michigan in 2022, and he

4:29

saw that companies were really interested in

4:31

sponsoring college athletes. He

4:33

realized he could make more than just an

4:36

extra couple bucks off this. So

4:38

Frederick used a stipend from USA Gymnastics

4:40

to hire two videographers. They helped shoot

4:43

and edit the content for his social

4:45

media accounts. I definitely felt like a

4:47

risk, but I knew I have full scholarship

4:49

here. I have no debt. I could stay

4:52

living off the dining

4:54

meal plans for a little longer. I

4:56

don't need to use this money

4:58

for anything else. I have a goal that I want to reach.

5:01

I realized, okay, treat this like a business,

5:03

invest in the right areas, and the money

5:06

will come back. The

5:08

money did come back. Frederick's

5:11

first brand deal was with a company

5:13

called Flips that makes chocolate-covered pretzels. And,

5:16

just so happens that Frederick's Instagram

5:18

and TikTok handle is Frederick Flips.

5:21

So I think this is what

5:23

people in the ad business call synergy. Frederick

5:26

also signed deals with Google, Marriott, and

5:28

Celsius, the energy drink company. He has

5:30

his own clothing line now. This

5:33

profile made him a social media star even

5:35

before he made the team for the Paris

5:37

Olympics. Yeah, pretty unusual for

5:39

a male gymnast, because Frederick doesn't

5:41

compete in, you know, one of

5:43

the major money-making sports for colleges.

5:46

He doesn't play football or men's

5:48

basketball. There are only 12

5:50

schools in the country that even have a

5:52

Division I men's gymnastics program. Compare

5:54

that now to over 350 D1 basketball programs. or

6:00

the footballs where there's a big lump

6:03

sum of money in contract waiting for you. I

6:05

want to be making the same amount of

6:07

money as these guys, nowhere near yet, but that's

6:10

still the goal to get to that level. And

6:12

so I had to get creative and say, okay,

6:15

the money's going to come from building

6:17

amazing businesses and using my name and

6:19

image to do big things rather than

6:21

just the gymnastics part. College

6:24

athletes can be part of the influencer

6:26

economy now. And a lot

6:28

of companies see athletes as the ideal way

6:30

to reach young customers. That's according

6:33

to Aidan Syell. He's the co-founder and

6:35

CEO of Mogul, an online marketplace that

6:37

matches up college athletes with brands. Ultimately,

6:40

what brands are looking to get out

6:42

of the athletes is to reach college

6:44

students and Gen Z consumers. So

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all of these athletes are on campus and

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are the same age demographics, use

6:52

the same products, have similar likes

6:55

and interests. It doesn't matter what sport you

6:57

play. It frankly doesn't really

6:59

matter how good you are either, though

7:01

that helps. Yeah, you know what else

7:03

helps? Being an Olympic caliber

7:06

athlete like Frederick Richard. He

7:08

says his DMs on Instagram basically exploded

7:11

after he competed in Paris. So now

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he lets his agent sift through all

7:15

the inbound requests from potential sponsors. I

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don't know how my agent juggles the amount

7:20

of things coming. You need a team

7:22

to make the process easy. Another

7:24

big difference post-Olympics for Frederick is that

7:26

the brand deals he's negotiating now are

7:28

for like four year terms, before they

7:30

were usually for one year. And

7:33

this suits Frederick just fine. He says

7:35

he's playing the long game and going

7:37

for more lucrative partnerships than something like

7:39

free food in exchange for an Instagram

7:41

post. At Michigan, I door

7:43

dash every single day and I get

7:46

sweet green. Sweet green, you know, the

7:48

national chain of salad restaurants. And

7:50

every time I get sweet green, people come up to me like, hey,

7:53

why don't you do a deal with sweet green? You can

7:55

easily get free sweet green every day. And

7:57

they don't realize like it's not about just getting free.

8:00

food, like that's undervalued myself, you know, I

8:03

can just sign a deal that values me

8:05

right and it pays for my sweet green.

8:07

I'm thinking five, 10 years out because

8:09

I'm going to be doing my sport for five,

8:11

10 years. If a brand isn't going to help me

8:13

get closer to that, I don't really care about working with

8:15

them. Frederick says he ultimately wants

8:17

to raise the entire profile of men's gymnastics

8:20

in the US. That's a goal that will

8:22

outlast his own college career at the University

8:24

of Michigan. When I look at my brand, I'm

8:26

really thinking about how am I growing the sport? How am

8:29

I giving opportunities to younger kids, kids like me, like growing

8:31

up, I didn't see a lot of black kids in the

8:33

gym and like I want the sport to be 20 times

8:35

as big. So are we going to

8:37

see Frederick on a Wheaties box soon? Or,

8:39

you know, whatever this is the 2024

8:41

equivalent of the Wheaties box? Well,

8:43

Frederick couldn't divulge too much about deals in

8:46

the works, but he does have a new

8:48

bobble head. Man, I feel like

8:51

gymnasts are the new moguls if Frederick

8:54

is any sign of the future. Yeah,

8:56

I mean, he's presiding over a business

8:58

empire. This

9:01

episode was produced by Corey Bridges with Engineering by

9:04

Quacy Lee. It was fact checked by Cyr Juarez.

9:06

K Kincanet edits the show and the indicators of

9:08

production of NPR.