With Hailey Van Lith transfer, LSU has NIL 'super team'
Hailey Van Lith is already an established star. Fans love her bravado, wherever it goes. Brands have lined up to work with her since the inception of NIL. Her game speaks for itself as a two-time All-ACC first-teamer and former McDonald’s All-American.
At Louisville, she was the face of the program. Adidas worked closely with her, signing Van Lith as one of the brand’s leading faces in college athletics. She took the Cardinals to the Final Four and Elite Eight in back-to-back seasons.
The junior committed to LSU on Thursday. She does not need the Tigers brand to make her a national figure, especially in women’s basketball. But there is little doubt just wearing L-S-U across her chest and playing for Kim Mulkey will put her in front of a larger audience.
The 5-foot-7 point guard will also be playing every game next to Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson. Just being in the same building next to that duo is going to expose her to a new crowd by landing on their social media pages. The same goes for what Van Lith can do for Reese and Johnson: She has more than 830,000 followers and rising. Since Van Lith committed, she has added at least 30,000 Instagram followers.
LSU has quickly become NIL U in the last 21 months.
“If I were in a student-athlete’s place, and I had some brand opportunities, I’d want to go to an institution that did everything they could to help me maximize that [brand],” LSU athletics’ chief brand officer Cody Worsham told On3 on Thursday in a phone interview.
“There’s no question that’s what we’ve done. If I want to go to a place that has some momentum and some conversation around it, there’s no question we have that. We could take some institutional credit for sure. But we’re also very fortunate to have a Flau’jae Johnson, who built up an audience independent of LSU, and then decided to come on board with us. We’re very fortunate to have an Olivia Dunne, who built up a brand independent of LSU, and then came on board with us.
“We’re very fortunate to have student-athletes that have done this work. We’ve been in the right place at the right time to get them on board.”
Pairing Van Lith with Reese, Johnson could be NIL windfall
Leaving Louisville and entering the transfer portal was an obvious gamble to truly compete for a national championship. The Cardinals have come close but getting over the hump next year with Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark each returning to college basketball made the odds thin.
Instead, the point guard made the move to LSU. For as well-known Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson have become off the court, they’re good basketball players. Reese averaged a double-double this past year, while Johnson was named SEC Freshman of the Year. The Tigers also lost their point guard, Alexis Morris, to the WNBA Draft.
Van Lith can slide in, arguably upgrading the position.
“There’s been a lot of talk about, ‘Hey, athletes in women’s basketball that are doing really well are going to stay. Because shoot, they can make just as much or more in college than the WNBA and keep growing the brand because viewership is even higher,'” INFLCR founder and CEO Jim Cavale said. “We’ve seen people make that decision. But the other thing is they can make super teams because of the portal. Just like we saw super teams, going back to LeBron, D-Wade and Bosh, or going back before that with Malone, Payton, Kobe and Shaq. You could totally do that now in college, and to me, this is potentially one of the first big ones we’ve seen in women’s basketball.”
It’s a smart move. LSU has a team that can now easily compete with UConn, South Carolina and Iowa. The Tigers were probably going to be in that conversation anyway. This solidifies that.
They also now have an NIL super team. Back in January, Johnson released a music video that featured her rapping throughout the LSU basketball facility. The YouTube video has more than one million views. The video displayed how pairing herself with the LSU brand only amplifies her profile.
It’s a dose of the exposure Van Lith will now easily have access to.
Angel Reese, nicknamed the “Bayou Barbie,” has signed deals with Caktus AI and Raising Cane’s since winning the national championship earlier this month. Her social media has ballooned to nearly four million, which heavily featured Van Lith on Thursday afternoon.
“She’s a good player that has a different audience than Angel and Flau’jae,” Cavale said. “Now that audience is going to be exposed to Angel and Flau’jae. And now their audiences are gonna be exposed to Hailey’s. It just all comes together – it’s one big audience. It’s got that exponential magic to it, that can help all of them, which is great. And of course, they’re gonna be really good on the court.”
There is also the matter of setting herself up for success for post-career success. Van Lith already has a $518,000 On3 NIL Valuation and will surely rise in the coming weeks with the move to LSU. With two years of eligibility remaining, playing professionally is not a priority right now. It will be an option for her, though.
She may not need to either. With plenty of social media followers that will only be rising, she will probably have the chance to make a decision similar to the Cavinder twins, who recently decided to forgo their final year of eligibility at Miami and become full-time influencers. They signed with Jake Paul’s Betr as media and equity partners last week.
“Not that the twins didn’t have the performance, but Hailey’s like top of the top as it is and already has a brand,” said Sam Green, who works in athlete engagement at MarketPryce. “So seeing athletes actually dive into both of those things is absolutely critical. It’s everything. It could even secure a higher spot in the WNBA. You can truly do anything that you want. Look at the twins. They could have stayed they could have made more money in college, but they wanted to take the next step. Social media is setting up the platform for these athletes for whatever it is that they want to do, whether it’s continuing their career or finding an alternative like the twins did.”
NIL success at LSU
Trying to forecast the type of NIL success awaiting Van Lith in Baton Rouge is hard to project. Looking at the body of work LSU athletes have accomplished, however, makes clear brands have no problem striking partnerships with Tigers.
Taylor Jacobs serves as the associate athletic director of NIL and strategic initiatives at LSU. When prospects, either high school or portal recruits, come in for a visit, someone from her department sits down to discuss NIL at LSU. She did not specifically chat with Van Lith on her visit, which was fast and filled with a number of stops. But she has a strong inkling of what the future LSU basketball star was informed.
“With the coaches that we’ve brought to our programs, and the student-athletes and our programs, like it’s just elevated that brand even more,” Jacobs said. “And that’s something that we always say to incoming student-athletes is, ‘Now you have the opportunity to elevate your brand, because every athlete, they have their own story. LSU is only a piece of their story.’ That’s something we do in our offices to try to teach them how to create their brand and navigate their brand.
“What is their brand? Just even developing it? LSU is a piece of that. So how do you use that? How do you leverage that?”
Jacobs can’t promise Van Lith will see an uptick in NIL deals with her move to LSU, but she is confident the point guard will see plenty of opportunities fall her way. Currently represented by Octagon Sports, on top of her work with adidas, she has partnered with Dick’s Sporting Goods, Valentino, Overtime and Billionaire Girls Club.
What LSU can offer, which maybe Louisville could never from an NIL perspective, is their fan base. The LSU Alumni Association claims more than 130 chapters and more than 230,000 alumni worldwide. When the Tigers play football Saturday nights in the fall, 102,321 cram into Death Valley.
The Tigers also have a tradition of building stars. LSU has produced some of the most beloved nicknames in college sports history: Pistol Pete, Shaq and the Honey Badger. Bayou Barbie has quickly joined that list. Could Hailey Van Lith be next?
“Our motto around here: One state, two colors, three letters – forever LSU,” Worsham said. “And what that essentially means is the one state piece is we are the brand of Louisiana. Like we’re not competing with another Power Five school. It’s not Auburn, Alabama, Mississippi State or Ole Miss.
“This is LSU. It’s Louisiana. You’re going to come here, you’re going to be a star across the state.”