Alabama Athletics Unveils Program for Athletes to Elevate Personal Brands

The Advantage will provide education and resources to athletes to build their influence

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama Athletics announced on Tuesday that it is launching a program called The Advantage in order to educate and assist athletes on campus to promote their personal brands.

In addition to education, the program will also provide tools to maximize social media platforms and other efforts to grow and improve their influence.

“We are excited to launch this new program, which even further demonstrates our commitment to fully developing our student-athletes,” Alabama director of athletics Greg Byrne said in a statement. “We are blessed to have incredible resources on campus with our institution, allowing us to better fit our specific needs and evolve The Advantage, as needed.”

The Advantage partners with both internal and external entities in order to assist the athletes.

The news comes as issues surrounding name, image and likeness continues to be a hotly-debated topic amongst college athletics. State of Alabama governor Kay Ivey recently signed an NIL bill that will become law on July 1 and will allow college athletes to profit from endorsement deals.

Here is the full statement issued by Alabama Athletics regarding The Advantage:

Alabama Athletics Unveils The Advantage

The Advantage is designed to educate and provide Crimson Tide student-athletes with the tools necessary to build and elevate their personal brands

Alabama Athletics, one of the most recognizable and influential brands in all of sports, has created The Advantage, a comprehensive program that will provide Crimson Tide student-athletes with the education and tools necessary to build and elevate their personal brands.

In working with both campus partners and external entities, The Advantage, will focus on brand management, maximizing personal social media platforms and financial literacy.

“We are excited to launch this new program, which even further demonstrates our commitment to fully developing our student-athletes,” Alabama Director of Athletics Greg Byrne said. “We are blessed to have incredible resources on campus with our institution, allowing us to better fit our specific needs and evolve The Advantage, as needed.”

Alabama has ranked in the top two in royalties generated among the Collegiate Licensing Company’s partner institutions each of the last 11 years and was No. 1 in five of the last six seasons. Over the last five years, officially licensed Alabama product was sold in over 9,000 unique retailers, and during the last decade, over 60.3 million units of officially licensed Alabama merchandise has been sold by licensees. Most recently, the Crimson Tide set the 48-hour post-national championship win record for NCAA merchandise sales across all sports.

Prior to the 2020-21 academic year, Alabama partnered with Socialie, one of the top content distribution platforms, which has been instrumental in providing student-athletes, coaches and staff direct access to photos and videos. For the month of April, Tide student-athletes added nearly 140,000 followers on social accounts connected through Socialie for an overall total of 2,235,124 followers on connected personal accounts combined. In 2020, Alabama athletics social channels generated north of 1.1 billion impressions, while the previous month totaled more than 50 million interactions on the sport Instagram and Facebook accounts alone.