How 'King of NIL' Rayquan Smith Secured 86 NIL Deals

The NIL king is here.

That kind of king is none other than Rayquan Smith, who has secured 86 NIL deals, according to Blavity.

How did he do all this? The Virginia native pitched several brands for NIL contracts. During this time, the young player was waiting to hear back from the Planet Fitness hiring manager. But seeing his peers secure NIL deals made this that much more ambitious and had him return to the drawing board.

He would go on to develop a pitch to work for free for several companies. However, only three companies responded after the first round of emails.

But he was never deterred, as he continued to expand his list of company pitches, which led to his 86 major NIL deals, according to Yahoo.

Sports lawyer Darren Heitner, who represented the Cavinder Twins, confirmed the number of deals, which is the most he’s ever seen.

“I was hitting up every company I could, just asking, ‘Can I do this? Can I help promote your product?'” he told On3. “This, this and that. And I had a few people reply back.”

His first deals were Smart Cups and Eastbay in 2021. This led to him becoming the first HBCU athlete to partner with Eastbay.

“I guess other companies saw what I was doing, so they came on board, and I got an agent that week. Then, once I got an agent, I got one of my biggest deals, and that was Eastbay. Yep. So after that, it was just up from there,” Smith said.

Smith signed agent Freddie Berry to help build his NIL empire.

“There aren’t many athletes that create content the way that he does,” Berry said. “I’ve worked with Power Five starters, best player on their team arguably, and they’re nowhere near as good when it comes to the NIL aspect. Their photos are just on their Instagram page or just them in their helmet. They’re not willing to kind of step outside of that realm and dabble into the actual marketing side of NIL like him.”

His latest deals are Spikeball, Body Armour, G.O.A.T. Fuel, Arby’s, Champs Sports and the Norfolk Admirals hockey team.

Smith this year was awarded the HBCU Male Athlete of the Year by the HBCU Xperience. And pretty soon, he will attend the NiL summit.