"None of it goes to women’s sports" - Olivia Dunne questions NIL distribution

Olivia Dunne has expressed concern about the inequalities in the Name, Image, and Likeness opportunities for women in sports. Dunne has returned to LSU, extending her gymnastics pursuit with the university for the fifth year.

Following the adoption of the NIL policy by the NCAA, Dunne became the most-followed collegiate athlete on social media. She became the highest-paid female collegiate athlete, collaborating with several premium brands, including Sports Illustrated, and earned a spot on the Forbes 2024 '30 Under 30' list.

During a recent interview with flaunt.com, Dunne shed light on the disparities collegiate women athletes face. She also established 'The Livvy Fund' on July 6, 2023, to help navigate the women athletes through NIL policy.

The 22-year-old highlighted that everything that the school receives is distributed to men's sports, including football, basketball, and baseball, leaving women's sports with no funds.

“Women’s sports, in general, it’s quite unfair still with NIL,” Dunne said. “A big school like LSU [has] collective money. None of it goes to women’s sports. Most of the collective money goes to football, basketball, baseball—the men’s sports.”

Dunne has frequently expressed her desire to keep working in the NIL space after her gymnastics career with LSU.

“It definitely is frustrating at times" - Olivia Dunne opens up about challenges she faces while dealing with social media

Olivia Dunne of the LSU Tigers warms up at the Dickies Arenas for the NCAA Championship in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo via Getty Images)

Olivia Dunne recently revealed the challenges she navigates through while engaging on social media. The gymnast emphasized that her success did not come overnight and that it has taken hard work to understand her audience and master the platform.

“It definitely is frustrating at times,” she said. “The worst part is that people think gymnastics is easy when it’s not. The job is to make it look beautiful and easy. You’re not doing it right if it looks hard...The social media aspect of it—I worked really hard to get to where I am in building my personal brand, and it didn’t happen in the blink of an eye. It didn’t happen in just a year. It didn’t happen because of one viral moment. " (via flaunt.com)

She added:

"It happened over years of getting to know my audience, learning the algorithms, and growing my brand to be what it is today. That’s why people are so fascinated with what I’m doing.”

Olivia Dunne has a fan following of approximately 5.3m and 153.5k followers on Instagram and X, respectively.