Michigan expands NIL rights for high school athletes
Michigan approves NIL for high school athletes allowing them to profit from their personal branding.
- The Michigan High School Athletic Association now allows student-athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness, though there are guardrails.
- All potential deals must be disclosed to and approved by the MHSAA before being accepted.
- Michigan becomes the 46th state in the U.S. to approve NIL deals for high school athletes.
Michigan high school student-athletes can now profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL), effective immediately as of Tuesday, Jan. 27.
The Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) Representative Council approved new bylaws on Friday that will allow high school athletes in Michigan to sign financial deals based on personal NIL through an expansion of the organization’s personal brand activities (PBA) policies. MHSAA member schools were informed of the decision on Tuesday.
Previously, high school student-athletes in Michigan were afforded limited personal branding opportunities, such as hosting camps or clinics. The new policy allows expanded access for high school athletes in Michigan to “capitalize on personal branding activities” through other avenues as long as they are defined as individual opportunities for individual students.
“It is individual opportunities for individual kids,” MHSAA executive director Mark Uyl told the Free Press on Tuesday. “And they really are through third parties. Not only can there be no group or collective-type activity, but none of this can be connected to the school. So any school employee, head coach, volunteer coach, booster club member. All of this has to flow directly from the student-athlete and their family to a third-party company. And it is for individual opportunities for a kid to use his or her own personal brand. I think that’s a narrow exception.”
Michigan becomes the 46th state in the United States to approve NIL deals for high school student-athletes, according to the Business of College Sports website. The most recent state to approve NIL deals for high schoolers was Ohio in November.
The expanded personal branding activities cannot affect the competitive integrity of high school sports in the state, such as the formation of a collective or other “pay-for-play opportunities now the norm at the collegiate level.”
How NIL deals for Michigan HS athletes will work
Student-athletes can now sign deals including social media endorsements and promotions, personal appearances, photo sessions or autograph signings; modeling, advertising, merchandise, sports cards or apparel sales, and the use of a student’s NIL in marketing materials.
The prospective NIL or PBA deals must be compliant with MHSAA and school policy. Students will be prohibited from entering deals specifically tied to athletic achievement, awards, participation with a specific school or team or the outcomes of a competition.
Schools, school employees and coaches are prohibited from soliciting, arranging, negotiating or promoting deals on behalf of athletes. Additionally, students are prohibited from using any school names or logos and cannot participate in NIL/PBA activity while at an MHSAA event, such as a game or practice, during school or while on school grounds. Deals promoting things deemed inconsistent with “the values and goals of interscholastic athletics,” like gambling, alcohol or other banned substances, are also prohibited.
All deal opportunities must be disclosed to the MHSAA seven days before being accepted and must receive the MHSAA’s approval. Schools can choose to have stricter policies.
In 2023, the MHSAA supported a proposed state law that would have legalized NIL deals for high-school athletes. The bill, House Bill 4816, garnered enough support in Michigan’s House of Representatives, but stalled in the state Senate.
“The topic of PBA/NIL had been discussed at length with membership over the last three years during MHSAA Update meetings and various other conferences with schools and their administrators,” the MHSAA said in its news release. “The Council had debated the possibility of these rule changes since the Michigan Legislature proposed amending state law to allow for student-athletes’ use of NIL in 2023, and also after closely monitoring similar developments in surrounding states.”
How Michigan HS athlete NIL will differ from NCAA
In 2021, the United States Supreme Court ruled the NCAA violated antitrust law by placing limits on student-athletes’ earnings in relation to their education. The Court ruling, in addition to several states passing laws that allowed student-athletes to earn money from endorsements, led to the NCAA changing its rules and telling schools to set their own NIL policies, which began July 1, 2021.
The change opened the door for college athletes to earn money for their status. In addition to NIL deals, college schools can now directly pay players following a settlement in the House vs. NCAA court case — a combination of three federal antitrust lawsuits filed against the college sports governing body — which approved direct payment from schools to student-athletes.
However, the MHSAA’s new bylaws will be limited in scope and focused on NIL deals based on an individual’s marketability. Under the new guidelines, Michigan high school student-athletes can submit a deal for approval to the MHSAA, which will rule based on an individual’s status outside of their team.
Students who submit an NIL deal to the MHSAA will have to demonstrate they have a status or following which warrants an NIL deal.
The MHSAA will examine each deal submitted by a school on its online NIL page and decide whether to approve or deny. The organization says there will be oversight to try to prevent undue influence, or recruiting overtures, for high school athletes.
“What it really allowed us to do, being one of the last states to approve something, is we’ve been able to learn some lessons from what was done in other states,” Uyl said. “In early states, it was quite broad and they’ve been trying to reel it back in. And what was approved last week is very narrow for individual opportunities.
“There can’t be any kind of group or collective-type activity, but it is an individual carve-out for kids that get those individual opportunities. I think that’s something that we can certainly live with. It’s something our board is comfortable with and that’s why we are ready to share it with our schools.”
Nominate a high school athlete for the Detroit Free Press boys and girls athlete of the week.
Jared Ramsey covers high school sports for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at jramsey@freepress.com; Follow Jared on X or Bluesky.
(This story was updated to add a video.)
