Hailey Van Lith's NIL deal with adidas will carry over at LSU
Hailey Van Lith will not be rocking the adidas logo on the court at LSU. Yet she still plans to work with the brand off the court.
The former Louisville star announced her decision to transfer to Baton Rouge last week. A Nike school, Van Lith will wear the swoosh in all team activities but will still promote adidas through social media campaigns and initiatives, her Octagon Sports agent Alyssa Romano confirmed to On3.
“Yeah, it’s the same thing with Flau’jae [Johnson] and Puma,” Romano said. “It’s the same exact thing.”
Van Lith is not the first college athlete to find herself in this position. As Romano referenced, her new teammate Flau’jae Johnson has a preexisting relationship with Puma. Stanford women’s golfer Rose Zhang became the first college athlete to sign an NIL deal with adidas; the Cardinal is a Nike school.
Louisville was an adidas school, which obviously made life easier for Van Lith. She led the Cardinals to the Final Four and Elite Eight in consecutive seasons. Widely considered one of the top portal prospects this spring, she averaged 19.7 points and 4.5 rebounds in her final year at Louisville.
The 5-foot-7 point guard was one of the first athletes to sign with the sportswear giant, becoming one of the leading college faces of the brand. That will continue through her social media profile.
While it is every college athlete’s dream of landing a shoe deal, it just might not make sense at this point for Van Lith. The point guard has two years of eligibility remaining. Playing in the WNBA is the ultimate goal. But if she starts promoting her own shoe right now with adidas, she won’t be able to wear it on the court, and the deal will be forced to expire when she makes the jump to a professional league.
Sneaker deals in women’s basketball are starting to enter the market. Elena Della Donne and Sabrina Ionescu each have signature shoes with Nike, while Breanna Stewart holds an agreement with Puma.
Just settling into her new team is the main priority for Van Lith at the moment. Rocking the LSU logo on the court already has brands reaching out about possible deals, though.
“The LSU community is hyped that she’s there and excited,” Romano said. “I think the biggest thing about Hailey is she’s really smart and authentic about her partnerships, so she’s not going to just sign with anybody. It’s going to be thoughtful and vetted out. It’s awesome that there’s interest and excited, but she’s not going to sign a million partnerships.”
Pairing Van Lith with Reese, Johnson could be NIL windfall
For as well-known Angel Reese and 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.
Hailey 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 previously told On3. “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.
Hailey Van Lith’s On3 NIL Valuation
One of the reasons adidas wants to stick with Van Lith is because of the loyal brand she has built away from the basketball court. With more than 837,000 followers, she has been able to turn her basketball game into a following.
The list of brand deals she has landed includes Dick’s Sporting Goods, Valentino, Overtime and Billionaire Girls Club. She has a $506,000 On3 NIL Valuation, which ranks No. 5 in women’s college basketball. The evaluation is also No. 89 in the On3 NIL 100, which is the first of its kind and defacto NIL ranking of the top 100 high school and college athletes ranked by their On3 NIL Valuation.
The On3 NIL Valuation is the industry’s leading index that sets the standard market NIL value for high school and college athletes. A proprietary algorithm, the On3 NIL Valuation calculates an athlete’s NIL value using dynamic data points targeting three primary categories: performance, influence and exposure.
About On3 NIL Valuation, Brand Value, Roster Value
While the algorithm includes deal data, it does not act as a tracker of the value of NIL deals athletes have completed to date, nor does it set an athlete’s NIL valuation for their entire career. The On3 NIL Valuation calculates the optimized NIL opportunity for athletes relative to the overall NIL market and projects out to as long as 12 months into the future.