NIL and Revenue Sharing: What It Means for Soccer, Volleyball, and Non-Revenue Sport Families | RosterWise™

What changed in 2024-2025

The landscape of college athlete compensation has changed more in the past two years than in the previous century. Here’s the timeline:

July 2021: The NCAA first allowed athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL) through third-party deals. This opened the door for endorsements, social media partnerships, autograph signings, and other commercial activities — but only through deals with parties outside the university itself.

October 2024: The NCAA Division I Council eliminated the National Letter of Intent (NLI) for Division I, replacing it with the written offer of athletics aid. NCAA.org states that Division II schools may still use the NLI. See our verbal commitment guide for what this means in practice.

June 6, 2025: Judge Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California approved the House v. NCAA settlement — the landmark case that fundamentally restructured how schools can compensate athletes directly. See our House settlement guide for a comprehensive breakdown.

June 11, 2025: The NIL Go portal launched under the newly established College Sports Commission (CSC). All third-party NIL deals exceeding $600 must now be submitted to NIL Go for fair-market-value review by Deloitte.

July 1, 2025: Revenue sharing officially began with the 2025-26 academic year, allowing schools to pay athletes directly from institutional revenue for the first time.

These are real, consequential changes. But what they mean for your family depends almost entirely on your athlete’s sport — and that’s where the honest conversation gets uncomfortable.

Revenue sharing — what it actually is and who gets it

Under the House settlement, participating schools could share up to $20.5 million with student-athletes during the 2025-26 academic year — the settlement’s first year, and the most recent figure the NCAA has published. The cap is set at 22% of the averaged athletic revenue of the five defendant conferences plus Notre Dame. It is recalculated from that formula every three years, and rises four percent in the second and third year of each three-year period.

The NCAA has not published a 2026-27 dollar figure. Treat $20.5 million as the 2025-26 number it is, not as the current one, and ask each program what its pool actually is.

Participation is voluntary — schools “opt in.” Most Power Four schools have opted in. Most D2, D3, and NAIA schools either cannot afford to participate at meaningful levels or are not structured to do so.

Here’s what matters for soccer and volleyball families: the cap is a school-wide number, and nothing in the settlement divides it among sports.

The NCAA’s House implementation Q&A is explicit about what the cap is. It defines the benefits cap as “the maximum dollar value of revenue share payments or benefits a Participating Institution may provide to its student-athletes during an academic year,” and it says each institution “may provide benefits, at its discretion, to a student-athlete” so long as the combined value across all of its student-athletes stays under that cap. That is a ceiling on the athletics department’s total. It does not say what football gets, what basketball gets, or what soccer and volleyball get.

So the allocation is a decision each school makes on its own — school by school, year by year, and not published in any single place.

You will see percentage splits quoted in the press and repeated across recruiting content, usually assigning most of the pool to football and men’s basketball. Those are reports of what particular schools have chosen to do. They are not a rule, they are not a structure your family can count on, and no governing body publishes them — so we will not state one here as though it were fact. The honest answer is that the share reaching a soccer or volleyball roster varies enormously between schools, and at many programs it is zero.

Which is why the only number that matters is the one for that program. Ask for it directly:

• Has this school opted into the House settlement?
• Does this program receive any revenue-share money at all?
• If it does, what was the total for this program last year, and how was it divided among players?
• Would any offer to my athlete be guaranteed beyond one year, and what conditions attach to it?
• Who decides the allocation, and at what point in the year is it decided?

A coach who cannot answer these is telling you something useful. A coach who answers them plainly is giving you the only figure that actually applies to your family.

Third-party NIL — what’s real for soccer and volleyball

This is where the gap between perception and reality is widest — and where families most need honest information.

The Washington Post published an investigative analysis in October 2024, examining $125 million in actual NIL disclosures across major universities. The findings for non-revenue sports:

• Colorado women’s volleyball: 112 NIL deals totaling approximately $36,000 — averaging around $320 per deal
• Oregon State men’s soccer: Approximately $5,700 across the entire team
• LSU women’s tennis: Zero disclosed NIL deals, despite reaching the second round of the NCAA tournament
• UCLA rowing: 11 deals totaling $490 — about $45 per deal on average

USA Volleyball, the national governing body, has published guidance explaining to athletes that while average NIL compensation across all D1 athletes is reported around $4,000, the median is approximately $60 per deal. The few extremely high-value deals distort the average dramatically. When a quarterback signs a $3 million deal and 99 other athletes each earn $50, the “average” is $30,050 — but the typical experience is $50.

Per Opendorse and On3 reporting, Power Four women’s sports average NIL earnings of $7,947 annually — a number heavily distorted by outliers. Group of Five women’s athletes average $1,425 annually. The median across all women’s NIL deals remains approximately $55-$60.

What soccer and volleyball families should realistically expect:

• Most college soccer and volleyball athletes will earn modest amounts through NIL — typically local business partnerships, camp coaching, or in-kind product deals
• A small number of athletes with significant social media followings can earn meaningful amounts, but this depends on the athlete’s individual brand, not the sport
• The headline-grabbing six-figure NIL deals for women athletes are almost exclusively in basketball, gymnastics, and a small handful of volleyball players with large social media presences
• NIL for soccer and volleyball is much more often $500-$2,000 per deal than $50,000

Every athlete’s situation is different. But entering the recruiting process expecting NIL to be a significant income stream for a soccer or volleyball player means planning around an outcome that the data shows is unlikely for the vast majority.

The international athlete reality

This section is uniquely important for soccer families. Across the 213 Division I men’s soccer programs RosterWise analyzed for the 2025-26 season, international players held 2,099 of 6,203 roster spots — 33.8%, or about one in three. That is our own count from published rosters, not an estimate. The share is lower in Division I women’s soccer, at 12.4% across 349 programs.

For an athlete on an F-1 student visa, NIL is an open legal question — and the NCAA treats it as off-limits on U.S. soil. Here is who says what:

• The NCAA’s position is a flat prohibition. Its International Student-Athlete Handbook states that international student-athletes with an F-1 visa “are prohibited from engaging in NIL deals while on U.S. land,” and advises consulting the athletics compliance officer, the school’s designated school official and/or an immigration lawyer before any NIL activity outside the country or any change to a P-1, O-1 or EB-1 status.
• The federal rules do not address NIL. F-1 regulations allow only specific categories of work, such as limited on-campus employment and authorized practical training (8 CFR 214.2(f)(9)–(10)), and “any unauthorized employment by a nonimmigrant constitutes a failure to maintain status” (8 CFR 214.1(e)). Neither those rules nor the federal definition of employment (8 CFR 274a.1) mentions name, image or likeness. In July 2021 the Student and Exchange Visitor Program said it was still assessing “whether regulatory guidance is required”; we have not found later guidance.
• Revenue sharing is less settled still. The NCAA’s House settlement implementation guidance does not mention visas or F-1 status, so there is no published NCAA position on whether an F-1 athlete may receive revenue-share payments.

For families with international athletes: treat NIL and revenue-share income as unavailable for planning purposes unless the school’s compliance office and an immigration lawyer tell you otherwise. Don’t rely on any website, including this one, for an answer no agency has given.

Correction, October 9, 2026. An earlier version of this section said that “most international student-athletes cannot legally receive NIL compensation under current U.S. immigration law” and that NIL activities are “typically classified as employment under federal regulations (8 CFR § 274a.1).” Neither regulation mentions NIL, and no federal agency has classified it. The prohibition is the NCAA’s own statement. We also removed unsourced statements about visa penalties and about O-1 and P-1 eligibility, and two law-firm and law-journal citations that were standing in for primary sources.

The NIL Go portal and what it means for new recruits

The compliance framework matters for families to understand, even if the dollar amounts for non-revenue sports are small.

The College Sports Commission (CSC) administers the NIL Go portal, which launched June 11, 2025. Under the current framework:

• All third-party NIL deals exceeding $600 must be submitted to NIL Go for review
• Deloitte serves as the fair-market-value reviewer
• Deals deemed “pay-for-play” or disguised recruiting inducements can be denied
• Athletes whose deals are not cleared face NCAA eligibility risk if they accept payment
• As of early 2026, only approximately $166 million in deals had been cleared through NIL Go — a small fraction of the estimated NIL market, suggesting significant non-compliance or reporting gaps in the broader system

For families during recruiting: Per the Butler Snow analysis of the post-House framework, coaches and collectives cannot use NIL as an explicit recruiting inducement. If a coach or collective representative promises specific NIL dollars during the recruiting process, that promise is technically a violation under current rules. The reality on the ground varies, but families should recognize that any NIL promise made during recruiting carries real risk for the athlete’s future eligibility.

If you encounter NIL promises during recruiting conversations, treat them as you would any unverifiable claim — note them, but don’t make decisions based on them.

What NIL should and shouldn’t factor into recruiting decisions

This is the practical guidance section — the part that actually helps your family make better decisions.

Should NOT factor heavily into soccer or volleyball recruiting decisions:

• The promise of large NIL earnings. Mathematically unlikely for the vast majority of athletes in these sports.
• Comparing programs based on revenue-sharing budgets. The differences for non-revenue sports are mostly negligible. A program sharing at the cap and one sharing a fraction of it may allocate functionally similar amounts to soccer or volleyball — which is to say, very little.
• Promises made by collectives during recruiting. These carry compliance risk and are not enforceable. Collective landscapes change, leadership turns over, and what’s promised today may not exist tomorrow.
• The “NIL star” narratives in media coverage. Statistical outliers, not representative of typical experience.

SHOULD factor into recruiting decisions — these are the variables that actually matter for soccer and volleyball recruits:

• Athletic fit at the program — position depth, class-year gaps, recruiting style (see roster intelligence)
• Academic fit and major availability — test scores, acceptance rates, graduation rates
• Coaching staff stability and program direction — tenure, recruiting networks, playing style
• Geographic preferences and family proximity
• Cost reality — including how athletic scholarships, academic aid, and need-based aid stack together (see our athletic scholarships guide)
• Roster opportunities and realistic playing-time projections

For most soccer and volleyball recruits, the variables that have always mattered for college decisions still matter most. NIL is real but secondary. Revenue sharing is real but minimal. Treating these as primary factors in choosing a program means optimizing for a small possibility while ignoring the substance of the college experience.

A few honest exceptions

There are cases where NIL does meaningfully impact non-revenue sport athletes. Being honest about them is part of being honest about the landscape:

• Athletes with significant social media followings can earn meaningful NIL through influencer-style deals — though this usually depends on the athlete’s individual brand and audience, not the sport itself
• Top-tier women’s volleyball athletes at programs with large fan bases — Wisconsin, Nebraska, Texas, and a few others — can attract larger NIL deals than the typical pattern suggests
• Athletes from in-state with strong local business connections sometimes find more NIL opportunities than out-of-state recruits, simply because local businesses want local faces
• Athletes whose families help cultivate brand opportunities — with awareness of compliance rules — sometimes earn more than the baseline

But none of these should drive program selection. They’re outcomes that can emerge once an athlete is at a program — not factors to predict or optimize during recruiting.

Every recruiting journey is different

No two athletes have the same NIL experience, just as no two athletes have the same recruiting journey. Some soccer and volleyball athletes will end up at programs that include their sport in revenue-share allocations; most will not. Some will land local NIL deals that provide meaningful supplemental income; most will earn modest amounts at best. International athletes on F-1 visas face an open legal question about NIL, covered above.

The honest answer for most families is that NIL and revenue sharing are real parts of the modern college landscape — but for soccer and volleyball recruits specifically, they should be understood, not over-weighted in decision-making. The recruiting process has always been about finding the right fit: the right program, the right academics, the right coaching staff, the right culture. NIL hasn’t changed that fundamental truth — even if the headlines suggest otherwise.

NIL and revenue-sharing rules continue to evolve rapidly. The revenue-sharing figures here reflect the 2025-26 academic year — the settlement’s first year and the most recent the NCAA has published a cap for — re-verified against the NCAA’s House implementation Q&A (updated February 11, 2026) on 2026-08-26. That Q&A caps what a school may provide in total and leaves the split among sports to each institution’s discretion; it publishes no allocation, and neither do we. The NIL market data and immigration analysis reflect the landscape as of May 2026. Verify current rules with the NCAA and the College Sports Commission, and confirm program-level revenue sharing with each school.