Topline
Louisiana State University athletes Jayden Daniels, Olivia Dunne, Angel Reese and others who inspired millions of dollars in deals with some of the country’s biggest brands—like Reebok, Amazon, Passes and Powerade—will have their business acumen and the lucrative nature of their school’s athletic program examined in a new docuseries from Amazon Prime called “The Money Game.”
Olivia Dunne on Jan. 6, 2023 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Key Facts
The series will be a six part documentary featuring LSU athletes including Dunne, a Forbes 30 Under 30 participant; Heisman winner Daniels; and basketball stars Reese and Flau’jae Johnson, among others.
The athletes, many of whom made more than $1 million while still in college, are seen in the trailer for the series discussing how the changing of the NCAA’s name, image and likeness rules allowed them to tap into lucrative deals and build wealth using their personal brands.
Dunne, who signed a multi-million dollar deal with Passes in May and has more than 8 million TikTok followers, said in the teaser that the day the NIL rule change was the “day my life changed.”
Reese’s nearly $2 million worth of brand deals in 2022 and 2023 included partnerships with Reebok, Calvin Klein, Outback Steakhouse, JanSport and others; Daniels had deals with Raising Cane’s, Powerade, Urban Outfitters during his 2023 Heisman season; and and Johnson had partnerships with Cane’s and Campus Ink that included payments of $8 and $15 for each limited edition LSU jersey sold.
“The Money Game” will premiere Sept. 10 on Prime Video.
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Crucial Quote
“I love the game,” Reese says in “The Money Game.” “I can also take care of my family for generations.”
Contra
The series also promises to show a darker side of the extreme fame that shot the athletes to millionaire status. “The more eyes you got on you, the more people are gonna try to tear you down,” Dunne says in the trailer. Reese says she gets “inappropriate comments” online, and the athletes’ lives are described as a “pressure cooker.”
Angel Reese of the LSU Tigers dribbles with the ball against the UCLA Bruins on March 30, 2024 in … [+]
Key Background
Before the NCAA, the national governing body of collegiate sports, adopted a new name, image and likeness policy in 2021, college athletes were not eligible to be paid for their sport. They could not take brand deals, be cut in on profits from TV deals or merchandise sales or otherwise make money for risk of being declared a “professional athlete” ineligible to compete at the college level. The new policy, however, opened the doors for athletes to personally profit from the billions of dollars in revenue brought in by college sports each year, and since the policy was changed, athletes like former Alabama quarterback Bryce Young and North Carolina basketball player Armando Bacot have made hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Surprising Fact
Vanderbilt University track and field athlete Veronica Fraley, who participated in the Paris Olympics, took to social media earlier this month to explain that, despite her winning record, she’s still struggling to make ends meet. She posted that she “can’t even pay my rent” before rapper Flavor Flav and investor Alexis Ohanian stepped in to help. In her initial post, Fraley said “my school only sent about 75% of my rent while they pay football players (who haven’t won anything 😂) enough to buy new cars and houses.” Fraley was named the 2024 SEC Field Athlete of the Year, 2024 SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year and won bronze in discus at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials. The Vanderbilt Commodores football team hasn’t made a bowl game since the 2018 season and finished the 2023 season last in the Southeastern Conference.
Tangent
Dunne is estimated to have made 2.3 million in 2023 as “TikTok’s million-dollar tumbler.” Aside from her massive deal with Passes, her brand partnerships include Motorola, American Eagle and Vuori. She was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for sports this year. Reese, who was drafted by the Chicago Sky WNBA team in April, is also a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree. While at LSU, she was one of college athletics’ most marketable stars, appeared in Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue and had partnerships with Coach PepsiCo’s Starry and other brands.
Further Reading
Further Viewing
Mary Roeloffs is a Forbes reporter who covers breaking news with a frequent focus on the entertainment industry, streaming, sports news, publishing, pop culture and climate change. She joined Forbes in 2023 and lives in Dallas. She’s covered Netflix’s hottest documentaries, a surge of assaults reported on social media, the most popular books of the year and how climate change stands to impact the way we eat. Roeloffs was included on Editor & Publisher Magazine’s “ 25 Under 30” list in 2023 and worked covering local news in the greater Boston area from 2017 to 2023. She graduated with a double major in political science and journalism from Northeastern University. Follow Roeloffs for continued coverage of streaming wars, pop culture news and trending topics.
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