Florida High School NIL Lawsuit

The Florida High School Athletic Association, the National Federation of State High School Associations (the governing body of high school athletic associations, the "NFHS"), and of course the NCAA were sued yesterday for allegedly violating the rights of high school athletes by prohibiting them from doing NIL deals (and for the NCAA only allowing NIL deals during college, which seems like a pointless claim to me). 

TL;DR: like many other athlete v. governing body NIL lawsuits, the athletes claim that the governing body (here, the FHSAA and the NFHS) are illegally colluding to restrain trade in violation of the anti-monopoly laws.  While this case could have been brought under federal anti-monopoly laws in federal court, it was brought in Florida state court and cannot be removed to federal court, though if the case gets to the FL Supreme Court, it could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Lawsuit linked here.

This is similar to the Alston case where you could replace the NCAA with the NFHS.  But it's different because the NFHS doesn't promulgate national rules like the NCAA; the NFHS is more like a trade association with model rules each state's high school athletic association is encouraged to adopt. 

It's also different because there is nowhere near the money in high school sports that exist in college sports.  The only reason there is so much money in college sports today is because of a technological advancement called:  digital tv.  Before the 80's, when there were only a handful of college football games on TV each weekend, there was a limited supply of TV ads that could be purchased.  Now, in the digital era where it is possible to broadcast and replay every college football game, there is a virtually unlimited supply of advertising opportunities and consumers.  So there's money flowing to the conferences, and thereby the schools, which has inflated athletic department budgets.  Because there are many, many more high schools than colleges (by virtue of local education, etc.), each high school has many fewer alumni.  High school sports are also just not as entertaining to non-alumni as college.  So, the amount of money in high school NIL will never be close to what it is at the college level.  To boot, parents and the high schooler have to live within the district where they want to go to school, which is an impediment to flipping schools all the time for a recruiting benefit because parents can't just move across the state or country for their kids NIL deal at a new school since they need to maintain their current jobs.

Plus, there are already high schools that use money to recruit; they're called prep schools and private schools.  Who doesn't know of impressive high school athletes that get full rides to athletic powerhouses?

To me, college NIL (particularly football and basketball) is just a stop along the road to having college athletes be paid salaries like minor-league athletes because many people feel like their entertainment (which is the technical industry classification for sports) is less "pure."  But college athletes should be paid for generating the hundreds of millions they generate and treated like the professional athletes they, in fact, are. 

High school NIL is different though.  There is just not the commercial value for them and "paying" high schoolers through free rides to prep schools already distorts recruiting.  Plus, there are residency requirements for high school athletics unlike college.  So if an amazing high schooler wants to do a deal with Coke or whomever, it won't be misused as a serious recruiting tool.