One year ago, on July 1, Fresno State basketball stars Haley and Hanna Cavinder officially ushered in college sports’ name, image and likeness era, inking sponsorships with Boost Mobile and Six Star Pro Nutrition at 12:01 a.m. Eastern—the first minute that active NCAA athletes had ever been permitted to sign endorsem*nt deals.
Now, with 5 million followers on social media and a new home at the University of Miami after announcing in April that they were transferring, the Cavinder twins are still leading the way.
Over the last 12 months, the 21-year-old sisters have piled up partnerships with 31 brands, including Crocs, GoPuff and Venmo. Darren Heitner, a lawyer who works with the twins and is a former Forbes contributor, recently told the New York Post that they had already earned more than $1 million. Forbes estimates that the Cavinders have booked a total of $1.7 million in deals before taxes and agents’ fees, including cash they have not yet collected.
That puts them near the top of the heap across all of college sports. Chase Garrett, the founder and CEO of Icon Source, an endorsem*nt marketplace through which the Cavinders have struck a handful of their deals, says the twins rank among the ten highest-earning NCAA athletes on his platform, and all of their contracts on Icon Source have exceeded $10,000, well above the platform’s average of $2,600.
“It’s been a whirlwind, but I’m just super grateful for it,” Haley Cavinder tells Forbes from Miami, where she and her sister are taking two kinesiology courses this summer ahead of their senior year. “We’ve learned so much in the year, and there’s a lot more to come.”
The chain of events that led the NCAA to loosen its rules on amateurism last summer began with California’s passage of the Fair Pay to Play Act in 2019, which promised college athletes in the state that they would soon be able to maintain their playing eligibility while signing sponsorships. The Cavinders started their college careers that same year in Fresno, three hours southeast of San Francisco, but the legislation wasn’t on their radar.
It wasn’t until June 2021, when a landmark Supreme Court ruling in NCAA v. Alston challenged NCAA restrictions on athlete compensation, that the Cavinders began to hear the rumblings that college athletes might be able to profit from their name, image and likeness for the first time. On June 30, the NCAA announced an interim NIL policy allowing endorsem*nt deals; it went into effect a day later.
For the Cavinders, the timing was fortuitous. Hanna Cavinder had begun posting content on TikTok as a way to pass the time during the pandemic, recruiting Haley to join her account. They quickly attracted thousands of followers with their videos featuring dances and their basketball skills, which made them ideal targets for brands suddenly circling the collegiate waters.
The twins’ father, Tom, who himself had played college basketball at Nova Southeastern, had reached out to Garrett, who advised the twins to get their Icon Source profiles ready in case a rule change went through and brokered the connection with Boost Mobile. Tom Cavinder also connected with Heitner, who had helped Florida craft NIL legislation that passed in 2020 and who introduced the twins to Six Star. Contracts were drawn up and ready to go when the clock struck midnight on July 1.
The sisters planned to be in New York so they could ink the deals at the first possible moment, but when a storm grounded their flight in Pennsylvania, they had to sign through the airport’s WiFi. They then piled into an Uber and arrived in New York just a couple of hours before their first shoot with Six Star at 6 a.m. for a social media ad. The same morning, the twins appeared on CBS, ESPN and ABC’s Good Morning America, as well as a Times Square billboard that Icon Source rented out for its first batch of NCAA endorsers. They were stars.
Six Star, which had always used pro athletes to market its supplements and even signed a 2021 deal with cheerleaders who were not bound by the NCAA’s restrictions on marketing deals at the time, had wanted to make a splash. The company initially wanted to sign Connecticut basketball star Paige Bueckers but knew she was unlikely to move fast enough for a July 1 deal as she hired an agent and weighed offers from major brands. So Six Star shifted its focus to the Cavinders, who had a sizable audience as well as on-court accolades: Haley was the 2020-21 Mountain West player of the year, and Hanna had made two all-conference teams. Plus, they came as a two-for-one package.
Jake Duhaime, who oversees influencer and athlete marketing at Six Star through his role as Iovate Health Sciences’ communications lead, was also impressed by the sophistication of the Cavinders’ offering to brands. Jeff Hoffman, the twins’ agent at Everett Sports Marketing, notes that they can post videos to TikTok, where they now have 4 million followers on their joint account, or stream on TikTok Live. On Instagram, where they have nearly 900,000 followers across three accounts, they can also go live or post in their feeds, as a Story or as a Reel. On YouTube (72,000 subscribers), they can post longer videos or YouTube shorts. There’s also Twitter, where the sisters have more than 22,000 followers between them.
Each platform has a different price tag, opening up the twins to a variety of marketing budgets and contract lengths, from a single social media post to a two-year partnership, as in the case of retailer Champs Sports and pro-wrestling promotion WWE. There are also opportunities for TV ads, live appearances and speaking engagements.
“That cross-platform appeal is off the charts,” says Duhaime.
Hoffman, who says deals have become more lucrative over the last year as more brands have poured into the space, is focused on locking in long-term deals in “tentpole” categories like sports water and athleticwear so the Cavinders can explore less traditional categories, like fashion. It’s all about finding an authentic fit, Hanna Cavinder says.
The twins are adamant that their move to Miami was all about basketball, and finding a program where they can make a deep NCAA tournament run, but it’s easy to see how the bigger market and the media exposure of an Atlantic Coast Conference program could turbocharge their business. And basketball isn’t necessarily the long-term goal. While both Cavinders say they wouldn’t turn down an opportunity in the WNBA—no sure thing, either, given that they are 5-foot-6 guards—they now have other interests, including fitness and real estate.
For now, they’re enjoying their experience as entrepreneurs, after they announced in January that they were becoming co-owners of a streetwear company called Baseline Team that sells basketball shorts featuring the logos of college teams. They also haven’t touched the money they’ve made, investing all of it through their parents’ financial advisors.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t enjoying making it, though.
“Female athletes deserve equity in their sport, and I think NIL has shown that in the past year, that we have the same opportunities,” Hanna Cavinder told Forbes on Tuesday, less than a week after the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the watershed law that helped create new opportunities for women in collegiate sports. “So being able to be at the forefront of that is something that Haley and I take a lot of pride in.”
