Can High School Tennis Players Make NIL Money?

Here is the part that trips people up. In tennis, NIL is not a prize you win by climbing the rankings. It is a return on attention. The legal gate is mostly open already: more than 40 states and Washington, D.C. now let high school athletes earn from their name, image, and likeness.

So the real question is not "can I." It is "do enough people know who I am." That part you control.

The real NIL number, and why almost none of it is tennis

The headlines are real. Industry estimates now put college athlete NIL at about $4.5 billion for 2026-27, up 50 percent from the prior projection, and on track to pass $5 billion by 2028-29.

Now read the fine print. Almost all of that money is Power 4 football and men's basketball, the sports with stadiums, TV deals, and booster collectives. Tennis is a non-revenue sport, so it sees little of the school-driven money and barely registers in the sport-by-sport averages.

But averages are not ceilings, and that distinction is the whole story for tennis. The ceiling is set by your audience, not your sport. Anna Frey is the proof. She built a following of more than 800,000 on Instagram and over two million on TikTok while still in high school, and signed brand deals with American Eagle, FILA, and Head before she ever enrolled at North Carolina, where she is now a freshman. Her roughly $681,000 NIL valuation came from her audience, not from prize money.

Her tennis got her rated. Her audience got her paid.

What NIL actually looks like for a tennis player

Strip away the football numbers and here is the real menu: endorsements and gear deals with brands that want junior and college tennis, paid social content (the big one), appearances, autographs, merchandise, camps and clinics and private lessons run under your own name, and local sponsors. The orthodontist or the racquet shop that wants the best junior in the area on their wall.

Every one of those scales with the same thing. How many people know you and trust you. A player with 500 followers and no content has nothing to sell. A player with a steady feed of match results and training clips has a media kit. That is the whole game.

The high school rules, and why you check your state first

High school NIL is legal across most of the country now, but it is a state-by-state patchwork, not one national rule. As of 2026, more than 40 states and D.C. allow some form of it, and a handful still prohibit it. The states that allow it tend to share the same guardrails. You cannot use your school's name, logo, or uniform in a deal. You cannot be paid for performance. You cannot sign anything that looks like a pro contract while you compete.

Before you sign anything, check your own state high school athletic association's current rule. They change often, and the cost of getting it wrong is your eligibility.

Your audience is the asset

This is the part most families miss. In tennis, NIL is not a prize you win by being ranked. It tracks how known you are. UTR gets you rated. Your audience gets you paid.

That reframes the work. Posting your matches is not vanity. It is building the one asset that turns into NIL dollars and puts you in front of college coaches at the same time. The coach checking your Instagram before they reply to your email and the brand deciding whether you are worth a deal are looking at the exact same feed.

The international catch most people miss

Here is the rule almost no one explains. More than half of Division I tennis players, by some counts around 60 percent, are international, and most are on F-1 student visas. Under current U.S. immigration rules, an F-1 visa does not permit the kind of work an NIL deal is usually treated as. So a large share of college tennis players legally cannot collect NIL income while they are in the United States, even with a deal sitting in front of them.

If you are an international junior planning to play in the States, this is not a footnote. It changes where and how you can earn, and it is worth real legal advice before you commit.

If you are 14 to 17, here is the move

Do not wait for a deal to find you. Build the thing that makes deals possible.

Post proof of life. Recent results, training clips, two or three full points and not just clean winners. Be a real person on camera. Keep it consistent, so the last 90 days always look active. By the time NIL is on the table, the players who win it already spent two years building the audience that makes them worth it.

That is the work. We make sure the right people see it.

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