LSU's Angel Reese inks NIL deal with Caktus AI

With a focus on women’s empowerment in the NIL era, Angel Reese has launched a new marketing partnership.

The LSU basketball player has inked an endorsement deal with Caktus AI. The company has dumped marketing dollars into the NIL space, previously working with LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne, Miami‘s Cavinder twins and San Diego State‘s Matt Bradley.

Now the artificial intelligence company has struck a deal with Reese. Since the Tigers won the national championship earlier this month, her profile has been on the rise. Her social media following has nearly tripled since the Final Four, sitting at roughly 3.6 million.

In Caktus’ previous partnerships, the focus has been promoting the company’s products. Dunne showed off how she uses the artificial intelligence to work on essays; LSU shortly later issued a statement explaining how pointing out the educational tool could result in academic misconduct.

The Cavinders also showed off the capability of Caktus in their social media posts, while Bradley talked about the software at the Final Four.

In a video dropped across social media platforms Saturday night, Reese explains how women’s basketball has become one of the top sports in the country, in part thanks to NIL. A paid partnership, the Caktus logo flashes at the end of the video.

“We’re in a new era where women are cultural drivers, builders and power players,” Reese said in the video. “Our actions now will empower the next generation. We control this revolution and our reclaiming our place in the $16 billion industry we helped build. Progress is contagious; naysayers have no choice but to accept this new path.

“The days of underexposure, underinvestment and underrepresentation are over. We push boundaries and the world takes notice. This is only the beginning.”

Caktus AI’s return on investment

Thanks to the success of its three previous partnerships, Caktus continues to return to NIL. Started by former Notre Dame kicker Harrison Leonard and Michigan engineering grad Tao Zhang, the brand has described itself as a way for students to spend less time working on “meaningless writing assignments.”

Dunne’s TikTok and the institution’s response brought an unprecedented number of users to the site, which now has just under 2 million users. Revenue has gone up, too. Users pay $9.99 a month for premium access the artificial intelligence, including the text summarizer and paragraph generator.

“Look, we’ve gotten reached out to by pretty much every NFL team, pretty much every professional sports team out there,” Leonard told On3. “And at the end of the day, we’re going to stick to what we do best, which is influencer marketing. That’s where the real value is.”

There’s not much doubt Angel Reese is one of the most recognizable names in college athletics right now. Her celebration in the closing seconds of the national championship game aimed at Iowa‘s Caitlin Clark caused a social media frenzy. She’s used the attention to just grow her brand.

That’s exactly why Caktus wanted to partner with the former Maryland transfer. The target audience for the company is college students. Instead of sending emails, the focus remains social media.

“We’re a very Gen Z focused brand,” Leonard said. “We don’t send the emails. We don’t do a lot of things. So like whenever you think about our business growth coming, it’s coming from these TikTok channels. Where typical brands use emails as retargeting, we use influencers as our retargeting to acquire users onto the site. No one really likes getting promotional emails in their inbox. They’d rather see it on their phones.”

Caktus AI will continue to use NIL stars as their promotional tool instead of paid advertisements or emails.

Angel Reese’s On3 NIL Valuation surpasses $1 million

Entering March Madness, the sophomore had a $371,000 On3 NIL Valuation. Angel Reese’s valuation is now $1.3 million, which is the top-ranked women’s basketball valuation. Reese also ranks No. 13 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.

She is one of just 23 college student-athletes to have a valuation in the seven figures. The rise in her profile is a mix of the LSU star’s persona and established brand. Reese has worked closely with her agent, Jeanine Ogbonnaya, to monetize her NIL.

She joined her teammates at Raising Cane’s as part of an NIL deal, serving LSU students during the lunch hour. Along with Flau’jae Johnson, the duo has released limited edition jerseys through Campus Ink. She spent also spent part of Saturday at an appearance at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Baton Rouge. Leaf Trading Cards signed her as well, releasing an autographed card.

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.