Platforms, Portals, and Private Markets: A Structural Economics of Name, Image, and Likeness

Abstract

Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rights are commonly framed as a labor-market reform that compensates college athletes for previously unpaid work.  This paper advances a different interpretation of NIL as the emergence of a platform-mediated private market for intangible athlete assets rather than as a wage-setting system.  NIL compensation reflects negotiated valuations of identity-based, illiquid assets shaped by exposure, narrative, and institutional context.  The NCAA transfer portal functions as the central repricing mechanism, transforming latent valuations into contestable negotiations through episodic information revelation.  Drawing on private market economics, platform theory, incomplete contracting, and real options logic, we explain why volatility, frequent renegotiation, and compensation dispersion are structural features rather than transitional failures.  By viewing NIL within this context, several policy implications are identified, including the role of portal access rules in regulating the frequency of valuation resets, the importance of platform design and transparency in shaping information flow, and the difficulty of applying labor-market regulation to platform-mediated private markets.