Utah College Athletes and NIL in 2026: Who's Earning, How Much, and How the Market Works

Utah college athletes crossed a threshold in 2026. BYU freshman AJ Dybantsa sits atop On3's college basketball NIL valuation list with a $4.2 million valuation — an unambiguous signal that Utah is no longer a regional footnote on the national NIL map. This is the statewide picture of how the NIL market actually functions for Utah athletes in 2026, pulled from on-the-record sources at the schools, the collectives, and the Utah Legislature.

Utah's NIL landscape does not look like anyone else's

The structural reasons are specific. BYU is the largest religious-affiliated program in the Big 12 and operates under Honor Code standards that shape which brand categories its athletes can accept. The University of Utah is the state's Power Four football flagship with Pac-12-to-Big 12 transition economics still working through its athletic budget. Utah State just navigated a conference move of its own and is rebuilding NIL infrastructure inside the Mountain West. Outside those three, the UVU, Weber State, SUU, Utah Tech, and Westminster programs operate inside WAC, Big Sky, or Division II NIL environments where the dollar ceilings are lower but the brand-fit leverage for the right athlete can be higher.

That split — two Power programs, one Mountain West, five smaller-conference programs — is why Utah NIL requires its own explainer page rather than a reshare of national coverage. The On3, Opendorse, and national-media stories do not disaggregate Utah the way a Utah-rooted publication has to.

The Utah NIL law, on the record

The Utah Legislature passed HB479 in its 2025 general session, and The Deseret News covered it on March 10, 2025. The bill allows Utah schools to directly compensate athletes for the use of name, image, and likeness — a move that put Utah among the first states to explicitly authorize school-to-athlete NIL payments ahead of the House v. NCAA settlement going into effect. Its key provisions, per the Deseret News reporting:

• Schools may not use legislative appropriations, tuition, or fees to fund NIL payments.
• A five-year audit of NIL spending begins in 2028.
• The previous requirement that athletes submit NIL contracts over $600 to the school for review was removed.
• Schools are barred from preventing athletes from playing because they hired an agent.
• HB479 explicitly states that college athletes are not university employees.
• The law took effect May 7, 2025.

The bill's final version removed a provision that would have made direct school-to-athlete NIL payments public records. That is the point reporters will return to every time a payment figure leaks: Utah's NIL law does not require disclosure, but it also does not prohibit records requests. Brands negotiating in Utah can plan for selective visibility, not guaranteed privacy.

The top valuations on record

The On3 NIL Valuation is the most widely cited number in college NIL and updates continuously. For Utah athletes:

• **AJ Dybantsa — BYU men's basketball — $4.2M On3 valuation.** Dybantsa is No. 2 on the On3 NIL 100 behind only Texas quarterback Arch Manning, and No. 1 in college basketball. He signed a multi-year NIL deal with Nike during his recruiting cycle and has since added a Fanatics Collectibles partnership. The cover-image detail matters: Dybantsa is the reason the phrase "Utah NIL" is now a national search term, not a regional one.
• **Chase Roberts — BYU football, receiver.** Roberts has a significant six-figure valuation at On3, with the specific dollar figure varying by refresh.
• **Logan Fano — Utah football, defensive end.** Fano's return to Utah carries a six-figure On3 valuation tied to his Power Four playing time and Utah-native audience.
• **Alyssa Blanck — Utah women's basketball.** Women's college basketball NIL valuations have climbed sharply since 2024. Blanck's Utah-rooted recruiting arc supports a five-to-six-figure valuation range at On3.
• **Sami Blackett — UVU volleyball.** NIL valuations at the WAC level tend to cluster in the four-to-five-figure range for top-tier athletes with strong social followings.

Utah NIL needs a statewide directory by sport, school, and valuation tier. National databases can identify the largest names, but they rarely give UVU, Westminster, SLCC, Snow, or USU Eastern the same attention as BYU and Utah flagship athletes.

Utah's school NIL collectives, on the record

Two collectives carry the bulk of Utah's visible NIL economy, with a third building at Utah State.

The Royal Blue Collective is BYU's university-recognized collective. It launched in late 2022 and operates independently of BYU with the mission of "attracting top talent to BYU and helping student-athletes in family, faith, and life's pursuits," per the Deseret News coverage at the time of launch. The Salt Lake Tribune reported on October 11, 2024 on the collective's contracting structure and on February 28, 2025 on BYU's plans to fold Royal Blue's functions in-house as the university prepares for direct-to-athlete revenue sharing under House v. NCAA. That transition is the single most important NIL structural shift BYU fans will track in 2026-27.

The Crimson Collective is the NIL collective endorsed by the University of Utah for Utah Football. Utah Athletics announced the collective's membership program in March 2024, and On3's deal-tracker pages continue to surface public deals associated with the group. The same structural transition — collectives working closer to athletic-department operations — applies to the Utes.

Utah State's NIL infrastructure is the program Mountain West observers can watch most closely. USU's 2026-27 Mountain West resource base determines how much direct-pay NIL the Aggies can offer, and the program's return to public NIL coverage will be driven by how it stages its own collective and direct-pay mix.

The rest of the state — UVU, Weber State, SUU, Utah Tech, Westminster — operates with smaller collectives or athletics-led NIL support staff rather than standalone nonprofits. That gap matters for brands: Utah NIL does not start and stop at BYU and the Utes.

What brands need to know before approaching a Utah athlete

Four practical notes that come directly from the public record:

1. Agent representation is legal and does not disqualify play. HB479 explicitly bars schools from preventing athletes from competing on the basis of agent representation.
2. BYU athletes operate under additional brand-fit constraints. The Honor Code and BYU institutional standards shape which brand categories are acceptable. Alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and anti-LDS-value endorsements do not work for BYU-affiliated NIL.
3. The $600 contract-review threshold is gone. Utah athletes are no longer required to submit NIL contracts over $600 to their school for approval.
4. Direct-to-athlete school payments are legal but cannot use state appropriations or tuition. Schools must fund NIL from private sources — athletic-department revenue, donor contributions, sponsorships — not from the state's legislative allocation to higher education.

Brands that want to run an NIL campaign across multiple Utah schools will deal with at least three different contracting structures (BYU's Royal Blue transition, Utah's absorbed Crimson Collective, Utah State's active build). The single biggest time-saver is picking the specific athlete first and then contacting the athlete's school NIL office directly.

How to read the NIL record

Every athlete profile should carry a NIL valuation only when the public signal is strong enough to support one. The statewide directory then becomes useful by organizing athletes by sport and school while leaving space for athletes not yet indexed to submit themselves for inclusion.

That combination — individual profiles with verified NIL figures, a statewide directory, and a submission funnel — is what Utah NIL has been missing between news cycles. Legacy Utah media cover individual NIL stories when a deal breaks. The harder work is keeping the directory useful when no headline is moving.

2026-27 names to watch

Three watch items worth marking, each with a verify-before-publish flag on the forward-looking piece.

First: whether BYU's AJ Dybantsa stays one year or two. His NIL ceiling on the NBA-prospect side of the market argues for one. The Cougar basketball program's 2026-27 tournament ceiling argues for two.

Second: the first public Utah State NIL collective or in-house direct-pay announcement. The Aggies are the most under-sourced NIL program of the Utah Mountain West / Big Sky / WAC set, and the first substantive structural move by USU will rebalance that map.

Third: the first Westminster, SLCC, or Snow College NIL deal above the five-figure line that does not involve a transfer to a four-year school. Small-school NIL is the 2026-27 frontier, and Utah's small-school economy deserves its own lane.

Why Utah NIL needs a statewide directory

Utah NIL interest will grow every recruiting cycle through at least 2030. The question is whether Utah athletes are explained through a statewide directory, law explainer, collective explainer, and athlete profiles, or whether those searches go to seven different national sites that treat Utah as a sidebar.

The NIL lane and the JUCO pipeline belong next to each other because both explain visibility outside the obvious box score. One follows public market signals. The other follows development routes. Together, they give Utah college sports a fuller picture in 2026.