Cooper Flagg reportedly made $28 million in NIL deals at Duke

On his way to being named the National Player of the Year while leading Duke to a Final Four, Cooper Flagg reportedly racked up millions upon millions of dollars for his year of service with the Blue Devils.

It doesn’t take an insider to assume Flagg made a boatload of money as the country’s best freshman and soon-to-be No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, but when reports are coming out that he made nearly $30 million off just two NIL deals, it’ll make you take a step back. And that’s exactly what we heard when sports reporter Howard Bryant sat down with Bob Costas for a recent interview.

“He had a $13 million deal with New Balance and then $15 million with Fanatics,” Bryant said of Flagg’s NIL contracts from this past season, which equals $28 million across just two deals, when Costas asked Bryant how much the 18-year-old made in 2024-25.

That’s a lot of money just to lose in the national semifinal…

Howard Bryant suggests Cooper Flagg got at least $28 million in NIL deals while at Duke https://t.co/3mp5zDfjSX

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 29, 2025

Is that $28 million figure a yearly payout or the total amount throughout the course of the two contracts, however long they might be? These are more than likely multi-year deals with Fanatics and New Balance, but with how much money is being pumped into NIL funds right now, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Flagg received all of that money in one calendar year at Duke.

The school itself certainly wasn’t going to be able to pay out that much money for one year of Flagg’s service (that number was reported at around $5 million), no matter how good he is/was. It’s why the idea of him possibly returning to Durham for a sophomore season was also nonsensical — Flagg is likely going to sign a four-year, roughly $62 million contract (according to Spotrac) as the number one overall pick in next month’s draft when the Dallas Mavericks inevitably scoop him up. Other endorsements will sweeten the pot even more.

Flagg recently signed with CAA Basketball as his representation. He joins an agency that includes the likes of All-Star clients such as Devin Booker, Julius Randle, and Karl-Anthony Towns, who are all signed to multi-year NBA contracts worth upwards of $30 million per season.

Money won’t be an issue for the Flagg family ever again.