NIL valuations for 5-Star QB Arch Manning reaching astronomical levels

The most notable target for second-year head coach Steve Sarkisian and the 2023 Texas football recruiting class this offseason is clearly the elite five-star Isidore Newman quarterback Arch Manning. Texas is one of multiple blue-chip programs that sit among the top schools in the race to land a commitment from Manning this offseason.

But there is other news worth noting this spring concerning Manning that is pretty crazy to see.

Arch looks like he’s about to become one of the richest high school athletes ever with some of the NIL news that surfaced recently. Last week, Louisiana high school athletes were cleared to be able to sign NIL deals while still in high school.

As Bruce Feldman put it on Twitter last week, Manning is definitely the “biggest winner” in this situation with NIL coming to Louisiana high school athletes.

Manning’s NIL valuation is likely to be one of the craziest figures we’ve seen in college and/or high school sports to date. We’re probably going to continue to see his NIL valuation skyrocket in the next few months to the next year.

He was already a rockstar before Louisiana high school athletes were approved for NIL deals. Think about what his value will be for NIL after this approval.

Moreover, according to the On3 NIL valuations for Manning as of April 12, his value is still on the rise early this week. Manning’s latest NIL valuation per On3 is a whopping $2.1 million. The prior valuation for Manning, which was calculated/posted on April 5 was $1.6 million.

Texas football QB target Arch Manning reaches insane NIL valuation this week

Arch is now the fourth most valuable athlete per the On3 NIL 100, which lists out the 100 most valuable high school/college athletes calculated by a few main factors. He is also the most valuable football player (high school or college) on this list. South Carolina quarterback Spencer Rattler is second on the list. But Rattler’s NIL valuation is less than half that of Arch’s.

Social media presence and overall market value of the athlete tend to be the biggest overarching factors from what we can see in this calculation.

One of the biggest reasons mentioned for the growth in NIL valuation from On3 for Manning is the fact that he’s now joined Twitter and he’s verified. Arch also already has roughly twice as many followers on Twitter as any of his other accounts on social media platforms.

There is a ton of growth in the per post value for Manning of late. He’s got a valuation of around $4K per post on Tik Tok and Twitter. And his per post valuation on Instagram is just shy of $7K.

What’s crazy about his value per Twitter post is the fact that he has yet to even have one tweet. If he starts to get some real traction and engagement on Twitter, his per post value will go sky-high.

Most of the athletes in the top 10 most valuable for NIL valuations have millions (if not hundreds of thousands at least) followers across Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok. But Arch only has 14.1K. He is a pretty extreme outlier among the most valuable high school/college athletes in the sense that he’s worth so much but doesn’t have many followers at all.

In fact, Arch has by far the most value per follower in terms of NIL valuation among the 10 most valuable athletes, and it’s not even close. He has a value of nearly $150 per follower on social media. The next closest in that regard among the 10 most valuable athletes is Bronny James at nearly $6 per follower.

There are multiple reference points that truly show just how valuable Arch is and how much more his NIL valuation could grow if his social media presence and engagement grow in the months/years to come.

It’s insane that Arch is now worth more than $2 million in terms of the On3 NIL valuations and he hasn’t even started his senior season of high school football.

Arch is definitely the most valuable football player right now between all high school and collegiate athletes. He has a while to go to catch up with Bronny, but that could happen with an increase in social media engagement and presence this year.