Gatorade is including one other big-name athlete to its already loaded portfolio.

First-year Duke males’s basketball participant Cooper Flagg has agreed to a reputation, picture and likeness take care of PepsiCo-owned Gatorade, in accordance with a Tuesday announcement. Flagg is projected to be the primary total draft choose within the 2025 Nationwide Basketball Affiliation Draft and already has NIL offers with manufacturers together with New Stability and New Period.

“This has been an enormous 12 months for me on and off the court docket, and Gatorade has been there the entire approach,” Flagg stated in a information launch. “From being named the Gatorade Finest Male Participant of the 12 months to now formally becoming a member of the staff, it has been surreal to have my identify talked about with a few of the greatest names in basketball. The Gatorade roster is iconic, and I am excited to work with them as I take this subsequent step.”  

As a part of the deal, Gatorade will use Flagg in its advertising and marketing. Phrases of the deal, like Flagg’s others, are undisclosed.

Flagg is the newest instance of what’s already a dramatically totally different school sports activities panorama than what existed previous to 2021. For the reason that approval of NIL offers, school athletes have been in a position to capitalize on endorsement offers in methods they by no means may earlier than.

Gamers like Flagg, a extremely touted prospect and sure NBA star, have been in a position to web NIL offers, a few of them reportedly price thousands and thousands of {dollars}.

Flagg is Gatorade’s first males’s school basketball athlete, becoming a member of ladies’s school basketball stars similar to College of Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers and College of Southern California’s JuJu Watkins in addition to collegiate soccer stars similar to Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders.

“Cooper is an unimaginable expertise who shortly emerged as the most effective younger athletes within the nation, and we all know he has a vivid future forward of him,” stated Jeff Kearney, international head of sports activities advertising and marketing at Gatorade, in a press release. “At Gatorade, we work with the most effective of the most effective, so we’re proud to welcome Cooper to the household and are excited to be fueling him as his collegiate profession begins.”

Flagg has inked his NIL offers all earlier than enjoying in a university basketball sport that counts towards a season file. Duke performs its first regular-season sport Monday towards Maine.