Introduction

The right to control and monetize one's own name, image, likeness, and persona (“NIL”) — generally termed the “right of publicity” — is a state-law intangible property right with roots predating the current NIL era by more than seventy years. Its modern legal foundation traces to Haelan Laboratories, Inc. v. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. (2d Cir. 1953), which first recognized a transferable, assignable property interest in a person's likeness distinct from the personal right of privacy. Over the following decades, the doctrine matured through a mix of state statute and common law (California Civil Code §3344, New York Civil Rights Law §§50–51, and comparable statutes in most other states) into the framework that now governs endorsement, licensing, and publicity-rights transactions across entertainment, professional sports, and digital media.

Three distinct commercial ecosystems have historically monetized publicity rights, each with its own valuation conventions and planning considerations:

Entertainment and celebrity licensing — actors, musicians, and other public figures monetizing likeness through endorsement, merchandising, and post-mortem licensing, an area with the longest track record of appraisal practice and litigated valuation disputes.
Professional athlete endorsement — a mature market with decades of comparable transaction data, agency representation, and league/union-negotiated group licensing (e.g., through players' associations).
The digital creator and influencer economy — a rapidly growing category in which social media reach itself, rather than an underlying professional achievement, is the principal driver of commercial value.

A fourth and more recent category — collegiate athlete NIL rights — has, since 2021, become the fastest-growing and most legally distinctive segment of this broader landscape, and merits particular attention because its valuation and funding mechanics are still being settled in real time through litigation, legislation, and association rulemaking. For most of the twentieth century, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) prohibited student-athletes from monetizing their personal identity, treating any compensation beyond a scholarship as inconsistent with amateur status. Three developments dismantled that model: in O'Bannon v. NCAA (9th Cir. 2015), a federal appellate court held that NCAA restrictions on compensating athletes for use of their likeness in video games and broadcasts were subject to antitrust scrutiny; in NCAA v. Alston (2021), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that NCAA limits on education-related benefits violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, with Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence signaling that broader compensation restrictions were similarly vulnerable; and beginning with California's Fair Pay to Play Act and followed in rapid succession by dozens of states, state legislatures forced the NCAA's hand by enacting statutes permitting athletes to monetize NIL rights without forfeiting eligibility. The NCAA adopted an interim NIL policy on July 1, 2021, and the market has since evolved — particularly following the House v. NCAA settlement (final approval 2025) — into a structured compensation system blending traditional third-party endorsement with direct, school-affiliated revenue sharing.

What follows addresses valuation methodology, funding structures, and oversight across all four categories, with the collegiate segment treated as a case study given its unusually well-documented and fast-moving rule set. Section V then turns to the estate and trust planning implications common to publicity rights generally, regardless of which category of rights holder is involved.

Valuation Methodology Across Sectors

Valuation practice differs meaningfully by sector. Celebrity and professional-athlete endorsement value benefits from decades of comparable transaction data and established appraisal norms (Forbes' celebrity earnings rankings and the long-standing Q Score marketability index being the best-known public references). Influencer and creator valuation is a younger discipline built on platform analytics (audience size, engagement rate, and content performance across Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube) rather than settled appraisal standards. Collegiate athlete NIL valuation is the youngest of the four, having existed only since 2021, and is built largely on proprietary, data-driven index models (most notably On3's NIL Valuation, Opendorse, and INFLCR) rather than either appraisal consensus or a long transaction history.

Core Valuation Inputs

Notwithstanding sector differences, the platforms and appraisers active across all four categories converge on a common set of input categories:

Performance and professional output — statistics, awards, box-office results, chart performance, or other objective measures of achievement within the individual's field, and, where relevant, projections of future performance.
Audience and social influence — follower counts, engagement rate, content quality, and growth trajectory across major platforms; for the creator and collegiate segments in particular, this is often the single largest weighted factor.
Search and media exposure — web search volume, broadcast or press appearances, and earned media mentions, used as a proxy for general public name recognition independent of social following.
Market and category factors — industry or genre demand, geographic market size, and (for team-affiliated individuals) organizational or program brand equity.
Category-specific commercial demand — differential sponsor willingness to pay across sport, genre, or content category.
Career stage and contract duration — remaining career length, contractual term, and eligibility or tenure constraints that bound the period over which value can be monetized.

High-Level Algorithmic Structure

Where a sector relies on an index-based valuation platform — as is now common for creators and, more recently, collegiate athletes — the publicly disclosed structure follows a recognizable composite-index architecture common to brand-value algorithms generally:

Component scoring — each input category (performance, social influence, exposure, marketability) is independently scored, typically normalized to a common scale.
Weighting — component scores are multiplied by category-specific weights reflecting the platform's empirical or judgment-based view of what drives actual sponsor spend; audience reach has historically carried outsized weight relative to professional performance alone.
Aggregation and calibration — weighted scores are summed into a composite index, then calibrated against known executed contract values and reported market spending benchmarks to translate an abstract index number into a dollar estimate.
Continuous re-scoring — the index is recalculated on a rolling basis to reflect changes in performance, audience growth, and news-cycle exposure, producing a dynamic rather than static valuation.

It is important for planning purposes to recognize that any published index valuation (e.g., “this individual's NIL or brand valuation is $1.2 million”) is an estimate of fair market value for a bundle of commercial rights based on a predictive marketing model — it is not an appraisal in the formal sense used for tax or legal purposes, and it does not represent actual contracted or received compensation, which can deviate substantially in either direction. For revenue-sharing purposes under the post-House settlement framework specific to collegiate athletics, schools and the newly created College Sports Commission rely on a distinct “fair market value” clearinghouse process (described in Section IV) that is analytically separate from these consumer-facing index valuations.

Funding and Monetization Channels

Compensation for the use of publicity rights flows through several distinct channels across all four sectors, each with different funding sources, tax characteristics, and contractual structures:

Direct third-party endorsements — traditional brand sponsorship agreements between an individual (or the individual's loan-out or licensing entity, often an LLC or personal service corporation) and a business, compensated via cash, equity, or in-kind goods, in exchange for use of name, image, or likeness in marketing.
Group licensing and collective arrangements — pooled licensing of a group's publicity rights (a team roster, a guild membership, or a network of creators) for merchandise, trading cards, video games, or content syndication, administered through licensing agencies and distributed pursuant to a group agreement. In collegiate athletics, this function is served by booster-funded “NIL collectives,” school-adjacent but legally independent entities — organized as nonprofit or for-profit LLCs — that proliferated between 2021 and 2025 as the primary vehicle for compensation routed around direct institutional payment.
Organizational or institutional revenue sharing — direct sharing of organizational revenue with the individual, most developed in professional sports through league and union-negotiated agreements, and, since 2025, present in collegiate athletics as well: following final approval of the House v. NCAA settlement, Division I institutions may now share athletics revenue directly with athletes, subject to an annual per-school compensation cap (initially approximately $20.5 million for the 2025–26 academic year, indexed to rise over a ten-year settlement term).
Agency and marketplace platforms — firms functioning as deal-flow intermediaries connecting brands to talent and processing payment and compliance documentation, generally on a commission basis (Opendorse and INFLCR are the leading examples in the collegiate space; talent and literary agencies serve the analogous function in entertainment).

A funding-side development specific to the collegiate segment is the post-settlement requirement that any third-party NIL deal (i.e., not direct revenue sharing) exceeding $600 be submitted to NIL Go, a clearinghouse operated by Deloitte on behalf of the College Sports Commission, for review against a “fair market value” standard intended to distinguish genuine endorsement compensation from disguised pay-for-play funneled through boosters or collectives.

Monitoring and Oversight

Oversight of publicity-rights monetization is fragmented across several layers in every sector, reflecting the absence of a single federal regulatory regime governing endorsement and licensing activity generally:

State right-of-publicity and consumer-protection law — because the underlying property right is created and bounded by state statute and common law, and because the Federal Trade Commission separately regulates endorsement disclosure practices under its Endorsement Guides, no single body governs the field; conflicts between state law and any organizational or association rulebook remain a live source of litigation risk.
Industry self-regulatory and organizational bodies — professional guilds and unions (for example, in entertainment and professional sports) administer residual and group-licensing arrangements through collectively bargained agreements; in collegiate athletics, this function is performed by the College Sports Commission (“CSC”), created pursuant to the House settlement, which administers enforcement of the revenue-sharing cap and operates NIL Go, the clearinghouse through which third-party collegiate deals over $600 must be reported and assessed for fair market value and legitimate business purpose.
Institutional or organizational compliance functions — in collegiate athletics, each member institution's athletics compliance staff monitors athlete disclosures, state law compliance, and adherence to institutional and conference policy, generally using disclosure platforms such as INFLCR or Opendorse Ready; comparable internal compliance and disclosure functions exist within professional leagues and entertainment guilds.
Federal tax authorities — the IRS treats publicity-rights and endorsement income as self-employment or business income reportable on Form 1099-NEC/1099-MISC (or K-1 if structured through an entity), subjecting the individual to self-employment tax and quarterly estimated tax obligations; the IRS has separately scrutinized the charitable status of certain nonprofit collegiate NIL collectives that purported to operate as §501(c)(3) organizations (the IRS Office of Chief Counsel concluded in 2023 that most such collectives do not qualify for exemption because the private benefit to athletes is not incidental to any charitable purpose).
Private litigation and arbitration — disputes over payment shortfalls, agent or agency conduct, and compensation-cap circumvention are increasingly resolved through arbitration clauses embedded in organizational agreements, with federal antitrust litigation (a continuing legacy of Alston and House in the collegiate context) serving as an ultimate backstop against anticompetitive restraints across sectors.

Notably absent, as of mid-2026, is comprehensive federal legislation specific to collegiate NIL. Multiple bills have been introduced in Congress to create uniform standards and an antitrust safe harbor for the NCAA and CSC, but none has been enacted, leaving the current multi-layered, partially self-regulated structure in place for that segment.

Estate Planning Perspective: Valuing and Planning for Publicity Rights

From an estate and trust planning standpoint, publicity rights present a distinctive category of intangible property that combines characteristics of intellectual property, personal services contracts, and brand or licensing rights. The analysis below applies broadly — to entertainers, professional athletes, creators, and collegiate athletes alike — with sector-specific caveats noted where relevant.

Characterization of the Asset

Publicity rights are a state-law intangible property right (recognized, with variation, in most states, including New York's Civil Rights Law §§50–51) that is generally transferable and, in a growing number of states, descendible after death. This characterization matters significantly: if publicity rights are properly viewed as a transferable property interest rather than a purely personal service contract, they can be assigned to a trust or LLC during life and may have post-mortem value includible in a decedent's gross estate under IRC §2033 (property owned at death), as litigated, for example, in the estates of Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley — both instructive precedents precisely because they involved durable, transferable publicity rights that outlived the individual's active career.

The degree of durable, transferable value varies substantially by category. An established entertainer or retired professional athlete with a built brand licensing infrastructure typically holds publicity rights with meaningful residual, transferable value. By contrast, the present generation of collegiate athlete NIL contracts is overwhelmingly executory and personal-service in character — tied to continuing performance, eligibility, and active promotional obligations — which limits transferability and reduces (though does not eliminate) the likelihood of significant residual value surviving the individual's death or the expiration of eligibility. In every case, the estate planning analysis should distinguish between (i) the underlying publicity right, which can have durable value, and (ii) the specific revenue-sharing or endorsement contract, which is often a short-duration, non-assignable personal services arrangement, particularly early in a career.

Lifetime Planning Structures

Entity formation — individuals increasingly form single-member LLCs, loan-out corporations, or (for tax efficiency, once income levels justify the added complexity) S corporations to receive endorsement and licensing income, separating business income and expenses from personal assets and creating a vehicle whose membership or stock interests, rather than the underlying personal-service contracts, can potentially be transferred to a trust.
Trust planning — for individuals with meaningful and recurring publicity-rights income, there are a number of effective planning strategies available. A popular one is an intentionally defective grantor trust (“IDGT”) funded with a minority interest in the licensing entity and valued with appropriate minority interest and marketability discounts. It can shift future appreciation in brand value outside the estate. Another, for the charitably inclined, is a net income with make-up provision charitable remainder unitrust (“NIMCRUT”). And there are several interesting permutations and combinations of each of these.
Income and liability protection — because this income is generally treated as self-employment income, basic structuring (retirement plan contributions, reasonable compensation analysis if an S corporation is used, and liability insurance for the entity) should precede any transfer planning.
Guardianship and minority issues — a substantial proportion of earners in the creator and collegiate segments, and a meaningful share in entertainment, are minors or recently emancipated minors; UTMA/UGMA accounts, minority trusts under IRC §2503(c), or court-supervised blocked accounts (as several states mandate by statute for child performers and, more recently, for NIL earners, modeled on California's Coogan Law) are increasingly used to protect a portion of earnings until majority.

Valuation Methodology for Estate and Gift Tax Purposes

Where publicity rights or a licensing entity must be valued for gift, estate, or income tax purposes, the consumer-facing index valuations described in Section II are not an adequate substitute for a qualified appraisal. A defensible valuation should instead draw on conventional intangible-asset and publicity-rights valuation methodology:

Income approach — capitalizing or discounting projected future cash flows (existing contracts plus a reasonable forecast of renewal or extension activity), with explicit, supportable assumptions about remaining career length, transition probability to a higher-value stage of career, and decay in commercial value following retirement or the end of eligibility.
Market approach — reference to comparable executed endorsement or licensing contract values for similarly situated individuals, adjusted for platform, market, genre, and performance differences.
Discounts — application of lack of control and lack of marketability discounts where a fractional entity interest, rather than the underlying contracts themselves, is being valued and gifted or sold to a trust, consistent with standard valuation practice for closely held interests under Treas. Reg. §20.2031-1 and §25.2512-1.
Personal goodwill considerations — because much current publicity-rights value is tied to the individual's continuing personal participation (i.e., personal goodwill rather than enterprise or entity goodwill), appraisers should expect significant discounting relative to a brand with established, transferable third-party licensing infrastructure; this is directly analogous to the personal goodwill doctrine developed in cases such as Martin Ice Cream and Bross Trucking, and should inform any valuation submitted with a Form 709 or estate tax return.

Practical Recommendations

Treat early-career publicity-rights income as a wasting, performance-contingent asset for planning purposes unless and until the individual establishes durable, post-career brand value (an established professional career, retirement-era licensing, or an independent media or business platform), at which point conventional celebrity publicity-rights and closely held business planning techniques become directly applicable.
Obtain a qualified, independent appraisal — rather than relying on On3, Opendorse, Q Score, or similar index figures — for any gift or transfer of entity interests holding publicity rights, given the IRS's heightened scrutiny of novel and difficult-to-value intangible assets.
Coordinate with the individual's agent, manager, or (in the collegiate context) institutional compliance staff to ensure that any contemplated assignment of contracts to an entity or trust is permitted under applicable state law, organizational policy, and (where relevant) CSC/NIL Go disclosure requirements, as unauthorized assignment can itself jeopardize eligibility, guild standing, or trigger compliance review.
Revisit planning at key inflection points — a professional debut or draft, retirement, expiration of eligibility, or a material increase in recurring income — each of which materially changes both the magnitude and the durability of the underlying value being planned for.

Conclusion

Publicity-rights valuation sits at the intersection of brand marketing analytics, industry- or association-specific governance, and traditional intangible-asset appraisal practice, yet none of these disciplines alone fully captures the asset in any of its four commercial contexts — entertainment, professional sports, the creator economy, or collegiate athletics. For estate and trust planning purposes, the central analytical task is the same across all four: distinguishing the durable, transferable publicity right from the transient, performance-contingent contractual income stream that often dominates near-term compensation — and applying conventional minority-interest, marketability, and personal-goodwill discounting principles to whatever portion of that value is appropriately characterized as property capable of being owned, gifted, or held in trust.

DISCLAIMER

This white paper is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial, or investment advice. The tax rules described herein are based on U.S. federal law as of the date of publication and are subject to change by legislative, regulatory, or judicial action. Readers should consult qualified legal and tax counsel before taking any action based on the information contained herein.

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Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) & Estate Planning: Valuing, Protecting and Planning for Name, Image and Likeness Rights