MANHATTAN, Kan. (K-State Athletics) – As college athletics continues to evolve within the new era of revenue sharing, K-State Athletics and Wildcat NIL have announced the consolidation of NIL efforts and will absorb the roles and responsibilities of Wildcat NIL moving forward in order to centralize and streamline giving opportunities.
“As we keep up with the changes in the landscape of college athletics, we believe it is important to have a clear and concise message to our fans and a path forward that will align with our goal of building and sustaining a championship program,” said Athletics Director Gene Taylor. “We sincerely thank the Wildcat NIL team, including former K-State student-athletes Curry Sexton, Pierson McAtee, Ryan Henington, and Jace Friesen, for their partnership and innovative work in the NIL space over the past five years. They have been a leader nationally and have provided our programs and student-athletes the necessary resources to compete at the highest levels during critical changes to our landscape in college athletics.”
“Wildcat NIL was created by a group of former K-State student-athletes who identified a critical need at K-State,” said Sexton, one of the managing members at Wildcat NIL. “As the landscape continually evolved over the last several years, our group consistently made necessary changes to ensure our programs could compete at a high level. We are proud to have played a role in a Big 12 Football Championship in 2022, a men’s basketball Elite 8 appearance in 2022-23, a women’s basketball Sweet 16 appearance in 2024-25, back-to-back NCAA Baseball Tournament appearances, including a Super Regional appearance in 2023-24, and many other individual and team successes at K-State over the last several years. As we usher in the newest NIL era — revenue sharing — at K-State, we believe it is vital that K-State Athletics continues to implement an aggressive and coordinated approach to revenue generation. In light of that, we believe the timing is right for K-State Athletics to assume our responsibilities.”
The recent landmark settlement in the House vs. NCAA class action lawsuit ushered in the era of revenue sharing in college athletics on July 1 of this year. For the first time in history, athletic departments are directly paying student-athletes for the use of their name, image, and likeness. This shared revenue will be capped each year, with the first year starting at $20.5M for the 2025-26 Athletics year. This cap will automatically increase by 4% each year, with a recalculation every three years.
In addition, under the new model, student-athletes’ only other forms of compensation can be from true third-party NIL deals that are approved in advance via NIL Go.
“As college athletics evolves, we must keep up and be proactive,” Taylor added. “Bringing all our NIL initiatives in house allows us to streamline our messaging and approach to fully fund the revenue sharing cap while also leveraging opportunities for student-athletes to earn true, third-party NIL with businesses.”
Taylor added that the department will look to add a staff member who will assist with third-party NIL opportunities, both directly and jointly with the efforts being made by K-State Sports Properties (Learfield) in this space.
Those wishing to continue to support K-State’s revenue sharing and NIL initiatives will have various options to do so. The Ahearn Fund recently launched the “Fighting Ever Fighting” campaign built upon philanthropic gifts to the Ahearn Excellence Fund. These gifts will earn donor priority points, Ahearn Fund member benefits and may be tax deductible. Beyond revenue sharing, the Ahearn Fund will continue its traditional focus of proving resources to student athletes for success in competition and in the classroom.
In addition, K-State will launch Cats+ in January, a new subscription-based service that will provide fans a direct path to support Wildcat student-athletes while also seeing benefits in return. The service, available on a monthly or yearly plan, will include behind-the-scenes access; special features highlighting K-State student-athletes and coaches via videos, podcast and special K-State Sports Extra articles written by D. Scott Fritchen; early access to digital and product-based items; exclusive digital content; classic game replays and enter-to-win sweepstakes for experiences and products.
Relatedly, Wildcat NIL will largely wind down its business operations by December 31, 2025, though Wildcat NIL will continue to oversee and facilitate existing deals through June 30, 2026.
Simply put, this transition will provide Wildcat donors and supporters with one primary organization to contribute with the flexibility of doing so in as many as three ways:
- Contribute directly to the Ahearn Fund/Fighting Ever Fighting excellence campaign.
- Subscribe to Cats+ on a monthly or annual basis.
- Engage with our student-athletes through true, third-party NIL opportunities (subject to approval via NIL Go).
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