Athletes and pros
Athlete, pro, and NIL ambassador software
Structure sponsored athletes, industry professionals, and NIL partners with gear seeding, campaign obligations, performance tracking, and tax-ready payment records.
Used by Salomon to run a worldwide athlete program across thousands of athletes.
What is an athlete or NIL ambassador program?
An athlete program is a structured sponsorship: you supply gear and support, the athlete supplies content, appearances, and advocacy, and both sides can see whether the obligations are being met.
NIL partners work the same way with tighter documentation requirements. What changes is not the mechanics but the paperwork — and the number of people who need to be able to see, at any moment, what they owe you.
Most programs run on spreadsheets until they cannot. Salomon moved a worldwide sports marketing program off them precisely because visibility, not enthusiasm, was the constraint.
Where athlete programs break down
Rarely at signing. Almost always in the twelve months afterward.
Obligations are undocumented
If nobody can see what an athlete agreed to and what they have delivered, renewal conversations become opinion against opinion.
Gear allocation is a spreadsheet
Sizes, regions, seasonal drops, and who got what last quarter, tracked by hand and out of date the day it is written.
Regional teams work in isolation
Each market runs its own version, so nobody can compare performance or roll a global campaign down to local execution.
How Roster runs an athlete program
Four stages, built for programs that span markets and seasons.
Stage one
Organize the roster
Every athlete gets a profile carrying their discipline, region, sizes, relationship owner, and any custom property you define — all filterable from the moment they join. Import an existing roster by CSV with column mapping, or nominate athletes directly and let them accept.
Ambassador CRM and custom properties →
Stage two
Give them one place to look
Athletes sign in with a magic link and see their obligations, open campaigns, resources, personal link, discount code, and reward progress on one screen. Salomon’s athletes cite exactly this — knowing what is expected and how they are performing — as the thing that changed.
The athlete portal →
Stage three
Run global, execute local
Separate programs per market or per tier, each with its own application form, rewards, and email templates. Large worldwide campaigns break down into individual countries so each market’s message, call to action, and assets are tailored — while reporting still rolls up to one view. When an athlete’s post performs, run it as an Instagram Partnership Ad from their handle to extend the reach you’re already earning.
Programs and campaigns →Instagram UGC ads →
Stage four
Seed gear and pay compliantly
Product rewards let athletes choose from a curated selection, with hidden products for pre-launch gear, country-specific shipping, and per-person limit overrides. Automated payouts run monthly with W-9 and W-8BEN collection and 1099 filing handled, leaving a clean record per athlete.
Product rewards and payouts →
What you are probably comparing this against
An honest read on where each option stops.
Spreadsheets and email
What most programs actually run on- Free, and everybody already knows how
- Out of date the day it is written
- No athlete-facing view of obligations
- Regional teams each keep their own copy
- Nothing survives the person who left
A sponsorship or CRM tool
Contracts and contacts, tracked centrally- Good at agreements and renewal dates
- No referral tracking or discount codes
- No content capture or earned media value
- Gear allocation still lives elsewhere
- Athletes have nothing to log into
Roster
Roster, obligations, gear, and results together- Filterable profiles by sport, region, and owner
- Athlete portal showing expectations and progress
- Gear seeding with country-specific shipping
- Content, reach, and referred revenue in one report
- Top athlete posts run as Instagram Partnership Ads
- Global campaigns broken down by market
Brands running this today
Three programs, three very different shapes.
350M+ reach
Moved a worldwide athlete program off spreadsheets and reached 350M people without buying a single ad.
Salomon · Outdoor apparel
10% of DTC sales
Built a new sales channel from existing customers, from zero to over 100 ambassadors in under a year.
Blendtec · Home goods
5,400% growth
A two-person team went from ten people mentioning them to over 550 ambassadors, on a few hours a week.
GoBe Kids · Consumer goods
Is this the right fit for your brand?
Worth knowing before you spend thirty minutes with us.
$1M+ revenue
Or roughly 10,000 customers. Below that there usually are not enough advocates for a program to pay for itself.
Athletes who post
Outdoor, endurance, fitness, and action sports work best. Sponsorships with no social obligation are harder to measure.
Someone to own it
A few hours a week is realistic once it is running. Zero hours a week is not, for any platform.
A cart we can track
Shopify installs in minutes. BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix, and headless are documented, with an API route as backup.
Pricing starts at $599 per month, with a discount for paying annually.
Athlete and NIL program FAQ
Will Roster work with our existing athlete program?
Yes. Upload your roster by CSV with column mapping, or invite athletes to join and let them accept. Existing referring relationships can be seeded so recurring order rewards work from day one.
Can we run different tiers of athlete?
Yes, as separate programs. Elite athletes, regional athletes, and industry professionals can each have their own application form, rewards, commission rates, and email templates, while reporting rolls up across all of them.
How do we handle gear rather than cash?
Product rewards on Shopify generate the order automatically when an athlete redeems, with curated product groups, hidden pre-launch products, per-person limit overrides, and flat or country-specific shipping rates.
Does it handle international athletes?
Yes. Automated payouts collect W-8BEN forms for non-US recipients and apply a 3% international fee that your brand can absorb or pass on. Country-specific shipping rates cover gear.
Can regional teams run their own campaigns?
Yes. Programs and campaigns can be scoped per market, so each region tailors its message and assets while the brand-level dashboard still shows the whole picture.
What do athletes actually see?
A branded portal reached by magic link showing open campaigns and their briefs, available actions, their referral link and code, reward progress, payment history, and any resources you publish.