Opendorse, ZIYNX Partner To Support NIL For Women Student-Athletes
After a successful 2023 in which it helped execute more than 500 Name, Image and Likeness deals through Opendorse, ZIYNX is setting a more focused goal for 2024.
On Wednesday ZIYNX announced that starting in February it will execute 100 deals in 200 days with college athletes participating in women’s sports. It also announced it would partner with Opendorse, which would give it access to the site’s brand network, which includes more than 30 of the Fortune 50 brands.
That taps into a growing NIL market, as some of the most successful athletes in the NIL space are women.
Two of the Top 10 NIL valuations at On3.com belong to women’s athletes at LSU — gymnast Livvy Dunne ($3.5 million) and basketball player Angel Reese ($1.7 million).
Reese’s teammate, Flau'jae Johnson, is No. 16 at $1.1 million. Two other basketball players are in the Top 40 — TCU’s Haley Cavinder ($868,000) and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark ($818,000).
It’s hard to get away from Dunne and Clark, in particular. Dunne’s commercials with Vuori performance apparel and Clark’s commercials with State Farm are in regular rotation during college sporting events.
ZIYNX says it hopes to tap into that with the help of Opendorse, which will help facilitate the deals. The goal is to distribute deals across all sports and include everything from podcast appearances and social media promotions to athlete generated content.
“NIL has opened an incredible opportunity to not only work alongside student-athletes, but to empower their growth by supporting their professional development through content-driven marketing opportunities,” said ZIYNX Founder and CEO Joe Carney per a release. “To discover those athletes and to activate their collective voice, there’s no better NIL partner than Opendorse. We share a mission to help every athlete, at every level regardless of their social follower counts, and this partnership brings us both a step closer to accomplishing our goal.”
