Florida Panthers Offer NIL Deals to All Female Athletes Attending FAU

The NHL's Florida Panthers announced Wednesday they've offered name, image and likeness (NIL) partnerships to all female student-athletes at Florida Atlantic University.

More than 200 FAU athletes are eligible for the program, which is in coordination with the Panthers' FLA Athlete program and Dreamfield, an NIL marketplace that counts University of Miami quarterback D'Eriq King among its co-founders. King previously signed an NIL deal with the NHL team.

"We're excited to announce this next stage of our 'FLA Athlete' program and bring an entire collegiate athlete women's program into our Panthers family," Panthers chief strategy officer Sam Doerr said. "We look forward to supporting and collaborating with these talented female athletes in our South Florida community on innovative ideas and events in South Florida."

Athletes who sign up for the program will be invited to attend Panthers games, where they can "engage their local fanbase through social media posts."

Florida becomes the first professional sports team to sponsor an entire women's college athletic program.

Although many of the high-profile NIL deals have featured football and men's basketball players since the Supreme Court ruled in June the NCAA could no longer limit "education-related benefits," Doerr told David Wilson of the Miami Herald female student-athletes have a lot of growth potential within the NIL market.

"Olympic athletes, female athletes that have massive followings on Instagram and TikTok ... can cut into a space that, quite frankly, we probably aren't capitalizing on enough," Doerr said. "Don't be shocked if we only have a couple football players and one basketball player, but we have five or 10 female athletes from Olympic sports that are really good with video content on TikTok."

FAU offers 10 sport disciplines for women: basketball, beach volleyball, golf, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, cross-country/track and field, volleyball and spirit.

The Panthers launched the FLA Athlete program in July.