Case Study:

Creator Economy

Most conversations around NIL focus on the athletes, the brands, and the deals themselves. But behind every strong athlete campaign is another layer of impact that is often overlooked: the creative network bringing that content to life.

Over the past three years, Postgame has built a national production system that does more than help brands activate athletes. It has created paid opportunities for thousands of videographers, photographers, editors, producers, and young creatives across the country, many of whom are getting real experience with national brands earlier in their careers than they otherwise would have.

This is the untold story of the impact Postgame has had on the NIL creative economy.

Postgame Creator Economy By The Numbers:

The Network

750+ vetted videographers
500+ vetted photographers
500+ vetted editors
40 states covered nationwide

Travel

250,000+ miles driven (10 trips around Earth!)
400+ flights booked
2,000+ hotel nights
700+ rental car days
500+ airport connections

Production

1,000+ content shoots completed
5,000+ hours on set
10,000+ hours editing
500+ hours spent scouting locations
100,000+ minutes of raw footage captured
Hundreds of terabytes of footage delivered
Thousands of batteries charged
Thousands of memory cards swapped

Coordination

10,000+ scheduling emails
20,000+ text messages exchanged
Thousands of calendar invites
Hundreds of weather contingency plans
Thousands of release forms collected
Thousands of deliverables reviewed

Logistics

1,500+ coffee runs
3,000+ meals reimbursed
Hundreds of Uber rides
Hundreds of parking receipts submitted
Hundreds of production kits shipped
Thousands of pieces of equipment packed
Hundreds of SD cards overnighted

Output

100,000+ videos captured
300,000+ photos captured
25,000+ edited selects delivered
Thousands of vertical videos produced
Thousands of social posts created
Millions of cumulative views generated

Postgame Brought NIL Deals to 19 Players In The 2026 NFL Draft

Postgame worked with eight first-round NFL Draft picks, including No. 3 overall selection Jeremiyah Love.

Postgame Continues to Define the College-to-Pro Pipeline, Partnering With Nearly Half of This Year’s WNBA Draft Picks on NIL Deals

Postgame’s impact on this year’s WNBA Draft was on full display, with 15 drafted players having participated in Postgame-led NIL campaigns across 10 different brand partners.

The Challenge

For brands investing in NIL, athlete content has often existed between two imperfect options.

Option 1: Traditional Production - professional crews, long timelines, high costs, complex scheduling, and a level of production that can quickly become too heavy for social-first content. These shoots can take weeks to coordinate, require significant budget, and often feel difficult to scale across dozens of campuses or markets at once.

Option 2: 100% User Generated Content - leaving content creation entirely in the athlete’s hands. UGC has a valuable place in NIL. But when brands are investing meaningful dollars into athlete partnerships, there is also risk: poor lighting, weak audio, missed product moments, unclear brand integration, delayed deliverables, or content that simply is not usable beyond the athlete’s post. Athletes are not actors, directors, or producers, and many do not know where to start when asked to create content for a national campaign.

Option 3: Postgame!

Postgame gives brands access to elevated, controlled, brand-safe athlete content without the unnecessary bloat of traditional production or risk of relying entirely on UGC. Through our national network of vetted creatives, Postgame can quickly staff up the equivalent of a full-scale production by quickly locking in athletes, crew, client attendees, studio/location rental, travel logistics, meals, transportation, lighting, professional equipment, and multiple deliverable formats - at a fraction of the cost typically associated with full scale production.

Postgame’s creative network includes videographers, photographers, editors, producers, creative directors, drone operators, social shooters, BTS shooters, student creatives, recent graduates, and small production teams. But this is not just a loose list of freelancers. It is a managed national network that has been thoroughly vetted over the years to ensure quality.

Our internal technology tracks every interaction we have with our nationwide creatives including their location, rates, past work, equipment, skillset, campaign history, reliability, editing ability, brand experience, as well as an overall internal rating system allowing our team to quickly filter to ensure our brands and athletes are working with the right ‘fit’.

How the System Scales

Because Postgame runs campaigns across different levels of production, the network is able to grow naturally. A newer creative may start with a lighter-lift content capture, while a more experienced partner may be assigned to a larger production with brand attendees, multiple athletes, or higher creative complexity.

Over time, Postgame has seen creatives grow through the system. Some have moved from simple one-off shoots into more advanced productions. Others have become trusted recurring partners who are brought into key markets or flown out for larger campaign moments when warranted. That progression is part of what makes the network effective. It creates consistency for Postgame and a meaningful opportunity for the creatives inside the system.

The Human Impact

NIL has created new earning opportunities for athletes, but its impact does not stop there. It has also opened doors for the people behind the camera. Through Postgame, young creatives have been able to work with national brands, build their portfolios, connect with athletes, gain real campaign experience, and form relationships inside the sports industry. In some cases, those relationships lead to additional work with athletes on personal content, NIL projects, or future brand opportunities. For many creatives, Postgame is not just another shoot. It is a springboard.

Why It Matters

The spotlight in NIL is usually on the athlete and the brand. But the creative work behind those campaigns has become just as important. Content is king, and in NIL, the question is no longer about the athlete posting. It is also about who is capturing the content, who understands the platform, who can move quickly, and who can make a campaign feel polished without making it feel overproduced.

Beyond the athlete, NIL has created a new creative economy. Postgame has been at the forefront of shaping that economy by building a national network that gives brands a smarter way to produce content and gives creatives across the country access to meaningful, paid opportunities in sports marketing.

Postgame is so much more than influencer marketing - it’s also production infrastructure that has real economic impact - one of the most important untold stories behind the growth of NIL.

“A lot of creatives can shoot, edit, and tell a great story, but they just need someone to take a chance on them. Postgame gave me a real opportunity to prove I could do that work for national brands.”

- Andres Casanova