The privilege to do it all? Exploring the contradictions of name, image and likeness (NIL) rights for women athletes and women's sports

Abstract

In 2021, the US Supreme Court forced the NCAA to drop its name, image and likeness ban, allowing collegiate athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness rights. Women's basketball's biggest stars have been some of the bigger beneficiaries, profiting off of their attention, media coverage and social media presence to draw in fans, earn significant sums and grow the popularity of their sport. While name, image and likeness rights are undoubtedly a step in the right direction for campus athletic workers on their road to adequate compensation for their athletic labour, they are not a panacea. In this article, I discuss the gig-ified nature of name, image and likeness labour, and examine the intersections of name, image and likeness and gender and feminism, exploring how they might impact women's athletes’ collective power and the sustainable growth of women's sports. Using an intersectional feminist lens attuned to the racial capitalist structuring of elite sport, I explore the potential opportunities, contradictions and unintended consequences that name, image and likeness might bring for women's athletes and women's sports. These include the opportunity to parlay individual players’ success and notoriety into better working conditions for all women's basketball players, the difficulty of finding a middle ground between viewing athletes as simply commodified labour versus demanding additional, ‘off-the-court’ labour from them, and the potential pay disparities and detrimental narratives that could arise if women athletes’ success is determined by heterosexist, ‘feminine’ ‘marketability’ criteria, without adequate professional opportunities for all players. I also argue that one's views on these questions depend partially on larger normative questions related to what women's sports and individual athletes should strive for, and what counts as feminism in sport.