South Carolina's Zia Cooke gifts team Beats by Dre headphones
Zia Cooke is making sure to tap into the holiday spirit.
The South Carolina basketball player gifted each member of her team Beats by Dre headphones, including head coach Dawn Staley. The presents were made available thanks to an NIL partnership Cooke signed with the audio equipment company.
“Huge thank you to Beats for gifting me with some Beats to give for Christmas,” Cooke said in a video posted to her Instagram. “Super dope, thank you.”
Beats by Dre has only ramped up its NIL activations since first partnering with Caleb Williams nearly a year ago. Since then, the brand has gifted headphones to teams through a handful of prominent athletes, including Bryce Young and Tank Bigsby. Bronny James also appeared in a commercial for Beats with his father.
One of the most decorated players in South Carolina history, Cooke helped the Gamecocks win the national championship last season. And this year, through 12 contests, she’s averaging 14.1 points and 2.4 per game.
South Carolina has not missed a beat, either. The top-ranked team in the nation has cruised to a 12-0 start with wins over Stanford and Maryland. SEC play begins next Thursday against Texas A&M.
On top of her on-court successes, she has capitalized in NIL. Working closely with Excel Sports, she has inked notable deals with Command, Grammarly and Campbell’s Chunky.
Zia Cooke’s On3 NIL Valuation
The South Carolina star holds a $188,000 On3 NIL Valuation. The evaluation ranks 17th in the Women’s NIL 100, which is the first of its kind and defacto NIL ranking of the top 100 high school and college female athletes ranked by their On3 NIL Valuation.
Zia Cooke has built a strong social media following throughout her college career, with more than 273K followers.
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 accounts for an athlete’s roster value and brand value. Roster value is the value an athlete has by being a member of his or her team at his or her school, which factors into the role of NIL collectives. Brand value factors in an athlete’s personal brand and the value it could bring to regional and national brands outside of the scope of NIL collectives.