Platforms, Portals, and Private Markets: A Structural Economics of Name, Image, and Likeness

The authors reframe what looks like a labor market reform as something fundamentally different: a platform-mediated private market for intangible assets. This distinction matters because it explains why standard wage-setting logic fails to predict NIL outcomes — athletes aren't selling labor, they're trading in illiquid identity assets whose value depends on narrative, exposure, and strategic positioning. The transfer portal becomes the repricing mechanism that transforms latent valuations into contestable negotiations, much like how venture markets work through funding rounds. For product directors this provides a framework for understanding how platforms don't just facilitate existing markets but create entirely new categories of tradeable assets, and why the resulting volatility and dispersion aren't bugs but structural features of asset markets operating under uncertainty.