How Livvy Dunne became one of the most recognizable names in sports

OLIVIA DUNNE KNOWS she hasn’t had a conventional faculty enjoy.

But it surely used to be a dialog with four-time Tremendous Bowl champion Rob Gronkowski, at a Sports activities Illustrated go well with factor birthday party, that in point of fact made that sunny.

“He said, ‘I don’t know what I would’ve done if all these eyes were on me while I was in college. That would have been terrible,‘” Dunne, a fifth-year senior at the LSU gymnastics group, recounted to ESPN.

However for Dunne, now 22, it’s all she has recognized for many of her past at LSU. She arrived in Baton Rouge in summer season 2020, with the pandemic ongoing, as a former yongster nationwide group member with a large social media following. She used to be taking a look to loose her mark on faculty gymnastics, however she had disagree concept after what used to be to come back.

Now, just about 5 years after, LSU is the reigning nationwide champion then profitable its first group identify in April. Upcoming the NCAA’s identify, symbol and likeness (NIL) rule fell into impact in 2021, Dunne has grow to be one of the vital recognizable faculty athletes within the nation, with greater than 13 million fans in overall on TikTok and Instagram. Per On3, her endorsements are valued at $4.1 million, making her the Disagree. 1-ranked girls’s athlete in entrance of basketball gamers Flau’Jae Johnson and Paige Bueckers, whose endorsements are valued at $1.5 million each and every. Dunne is No. 4 overall, in the back of most effective soccer gamers Arch Manning ($6.5 million) and Carson Beck ($4.3 million) and basketball participant Cooper Flagg ($4.8 million).

Dunne is a logo ambassador, influencer, style and graduate pupil focusing on era control. However at her core, she’s a gymnast who is attempting to soak in each final tiny of her ultimate months within the game. She hasn’t had the varsity enjoy she used to be anticipating, however she wouldn’t have it any alternative manner.

“I struggled, especially at first, with the amount of eyes on me,” Dunne instructed ESPN in January, date sitting in a hallway of the Paycom Middle in Oklahoma Town. As she spoke, those that walked via perceived to acknowledge her, and she or he used to be greeted via six-time Olympic medalist Aly Raisman. The 2 enthusiastically swapped tales about their stories taking pictures with Sports activities Illustrated.

“I was 18 years old when everything changed, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I felt like I couldn’t make a mistake. But something you learn on social media is you will get hate and you will get people that are bitter towards you, especially when you have success. But I think that having the eyes on me has been such a blessing in my life, and I feel like it’s translated over into eyes on the sport of gymnastics, which was a huge deal to me and a huge reason why I kept coming back for more. … Watching the growth of the sport, and women’s sports overall, has meant so much to me.”

NO ONE GETS to the yongster nationwide group and not using a towering stage of talent, ability and willpower, and Dunne had all 3 in droves. Like many elite gymnasts, Dunne used to be homeschooled during highschool and spent maximum of her past at her membership gymnasium, Jap Nationwide Academy in Paramus, Untouched Jersey. She made the yongster nationwide group with a Twelfth-place all-around end on the 2016 nationwide championships, and used to be named to the U.S. group for the 2017 Town of Jesolo Trophy in Italy, the place she positioned 6th all-around and helped the yongster group win the whole identify. In 2017, she had a ninth-place end in her ultimate yongster nationwide championships.

Dunne didn’t to find the similar luck throughout her senior elite profession. She had a form of accidents and prolonged festival absences and decided to let go backtrack to Degree 10, the easiest stage sooner than elite, sooner than turning her attractions to university gymnastics.

Social media had all the time been a passion and a amusing distraction from the calls for of the game. She joined Instagram at 10, documenting her exit out and in of the gymnasium. All through the early days of the pandemic in March 2020 when her gymnasium close indisposed quickly, Dunne stuffed her newfound detached past via making TikTok videos. It didn’t tug lengthy for them to progress viral. By means of the past she arrived on campus a number of months after, she had 3 million fans at the platform.

All through her freshman season, she earned All-The united states honors on bars and persevered to submit movies and pictures.

“I love to use my platform to give LSU the hype,” Dunne told Baton Rouge-area publication InRegister in February 2021. “They deserve it. This is truly the best school ever, and I always get so many likes whenever I post about LSU.”

But it surely used to be the summer season then freshman yr when the whole thing in point of fact modified. On July 1, 2021, then years of discussion and criminal battles, the NCAA’s NIL rule officially went into effect with many athletes, throughout sports activities and the rustic, signing endorsement do business in when the clock struck middle of the night. Dunne, after (and nonetheless) probably the most adopted NCAA athlete on social media, used to be featured on a billboard backed via LSU in Occasions Sq. that date — and the TikTok video she posted of herself with the billboard has 19.4 million perspectives.

Numerous sponsorship offer and do business in began coming her manner. It used to be uncharted waters for varsity athletes, and Dunne used to be now in the course of the sea with nearly no person to invite for recommendation.

“There definitely were some learning curves, and it took a long time to learn how to balance it all,” Dunne stated. “Especially between my sophomore and junior year, that was a super hard time because I just didn’t know what to do and there were nobody’s footsteps to follow in. So I kind of had to learn on my own how to navigate all this.”

In the beginning, consistent with Dunne, that supposed in need of to mention sure to each alternative. However she briefly discovered to be selective. Entrusting her mother and used sister Julianna (referred to as Julz) as her managers, she additionally rented famous company WME to ground and negotiate do business in. Livvy Dunne the logo used to be born.

Since after, she has tie partnerships with Nautica, American Eagle and Frame Armour, amongst others; filmed a countrywide tv advert marketing campaign for Vuori; inked a multimillion-dollar do business in with content material author platform Passes; and contributed to NBC’s social media protection of the 2024 Olympic Video games in Paris. Along Paul Skenes, her longtime boyfriend and the 2024 Nationwide League Rookie of the Life, she used to be a visitor picker on “College GameDay” in November. She gave the impression at the safe of Sports activities Illustrated along then-LSU basketball megastar Angel Reese in October 2023 and just lately shot her 2nd unfold for SI’s go well with factor.

Dunne says she most often begins her days with categories and schoolwork sooner than a gathering along with her agent and sister. Later, when Dunne is at follow, Julz, who graduated from LSU in 2023, talks to manufacturers and coordinates about what the Dunnes wish to do for diverse posts and deliverables. By means of the past Dunne leaves follow, Julz has the whole thing poised they usually after explode video or nonetheless pictures. By means of now, the 2 have their regimen all the way down to a near-science.

“She’ll be like, ‘You stand there, I’m going to record. You’re going to say this, we’re going to get it done ASAP,'” Dunne stated of her sister.

Era she made her personal trail out of necessity, Dunne is now the blueprint for others. In July 2023, she launched “The Livvy Fund” in partnership with LSU’s reputable NIL collective to “create more opportunities for LSU female-student athletes, while emphasizing the importance of bringing NIL funds to women in college sports.” In a observation pronouncing the foundation, Dunne stated she was hoping to percentage her connections and the teachings discovered with others. In October 2023, Accelerator power drink corporate, which had already inked a prior contract with Dunne, signed NIL deals with eight additional LSU gymnasts throughout the charity.

Dunne left-overs the one gymnast within the peak 10 NIL valuations in girls’s sports activities, however increasingly gymnasts are securing high-profile do business in. Jordan Chiles, Olympic gold medalist and a yongster at UCLA, is these days showing in a countrywide advert marketing campaign for Nike.

“There are some athletes who take NIL to this extent where they forget who they are and it’s their whole identity, but Livvy has done it right and not changed into someone else,” Chiles instructed ESPN. “She is who she is and she helps her teammates and does all these cool things with it. I think Angel [Reese] and [current LSU basketball standout] Flau’Jae [Johnson] and Livvy are amazing and have been able to change the perception of what it means to have a name, image and likeness and lead the way.”

Dunne has her detractors as neatly. A 2022 New York Times article, headlined “New Endorsements for College Athletes Resurface an Old Concern: Sex Sells,” featured Dunne prominently. In it, former Stanford girls’s basketball trainer Tara VanDerveer stated the a part of NIL that specializes in good looks used to be “a step back” for gender fairness in sports activities.

“I guess sometimes we have this swinging pendulum, where we maybe take two steps forward and then we take a step back. We’re fighting for all the opportunities to compete, to play, to have resources, to have facilities, to have coaches and all the things that go with Olympic-caliber athletics.”

In the similar article, Dunne stated it used to be empowering to put on what she sought after in her posts. “It’s just about showing as much or as little as you want,” she stated. Upcoming the tale ran, she posted a video wherein she lip-synched, “If you don’t like me that’s fine, but watch your mouth,” and captioned it, “Only steps forward.”

Her reputation has additionally had its drawbacks. Dunne ceaselessly draws immense crowds, and it will possibly manufacture a frightening, even antagonistic, surrounding. At a 2023 meet against Utah in Salt Lake City, a bunch of fellows keeping posters and a full-size cutout of Dunne screamed and chanted “We want Livvy! Give us Livvy” during the meet, annoying the routines of alternative gymnasts. Dunne, sidelined via an trauma, used to be no longer competing. Many of them waited outside the arena shouting for her then the meet. LSU added a safety property for the group at the street, and Dunne after pleaded with enthusiasts to “be respectful of other gymnasts” in a submit on Twitter.

LSU HEAD COACH Jay Clark is insistent when he says she’s no longer “Livvy” to him or the residue of the group. Livvy, he stated, is a social media personality, a celeb, however Olivia or Liv is the true individual, and the one that presentations as much as follow each date, able to do what the group wishes.

“Livvy is a different person than the person we know,” Clark instructed ESPN. “The Liv we know is inclusive of everyone and she gives back to our university and gives back to her teammates. We encourage selflessness on our team, and she embodies that.”

A habitual within the bars lineup throughout her first two seasons, an trauma derailed a lot of her yongster marketing campaign and, in large part on account of the intensity of LSU’s ability, she hasn’t been a constant member of the lineup since. All through her senior yr in 2024, she competed two times on bars and used to be extra regularly obvious on ground, with 8 appearances. She didn’t compete on the NCAA championships in April however used to be the exchange on ground in case a last-minute lineup exchange used to be wanted.

This season, via LSU’s seven meets, Dunne has notched 4 appearances on ground (with a season-high ranking of 9.875 on two events), two on beam and one on bars. She final competed Jan. 24, in a loss to Arkansas, and Clark in an interview Monday that said she has been dealing with a knee injury. “It isn’t a stress fracture, but it is a stress reaction on her kneecap,” Clark stated. “The only answer for that is rest.”

However even with out an trauma, Dunne wouldn’t be a lock to compete each time. A group is in a position to have most effective six gymnasts on each and every match and, merely put, with a roster just like the Tigers’ — which boasts reigning NCAA particular person champions Haleigh Bryant (all-around) and Aleah Finnegan (ground), in addition to alternative 2024 SEC particular person champions and several other former nationwide group standouts — this is a problem to easily form the lineup.

“Jay says every role on this team is so important, and I can’t agree more,” Dunne stated. “I feel like this year has been one of my best years gymnastics-wise, and I am pushing my way to make those lineups. But honestly, any role that I’m given, I’m so excited to do. It’s one of those things where you have to seize the opportunity when it comes.”

All through LSU’s victory over top-ranked Oklahoma in entrance of a people of greater than 13,000 previous this occasion, Dunne might be obvious cheering and celebrating for all of her teammates, and dancing alongside to apparently all the choreography throughout the group’s ultimate match on ground.

“We have a quote that we say a lot in our gym that’s stolen from [legendary UCLA basketball coach] John Wooden and it’s, ‘Happiness begins where selfishness ends,'” Clark stated. “Someone who is not performing as much as they might want still plays a vital and irreplaceable role in our success if they choose to embrace that. Liv is a great example of that, and certainly the most visible because of all the exposure she gets.”

And Dunne’s passion for her teammates extends out of doors of the gymnasium. Latter summer season, then LSU gained the nationwide identify, it used to be Dunne who discovered a method to get all the group out to Los Angeles for The ESPYS rite. Operating along with her brokers and a sponsor, Dunne tie go and a call for participation for all the group to advance the crimson carpet and attend the development.

She amassed the group in combination to percentage the inside track.

“I got to read the email to them, and everyone was going crazy,” Dunne stated. “It was just a very special moment. … Getting to share these opportunities with my team, who deserve all of this as much as I do, is incredibly special and very cool.”

Era it left-overs to be obvious how a lot Dunne will compete the residue of the season, together with in Friday evening’s meet towards Disagree. 9 Kentucky (7 p.m. ET, SEC Community) in Lexington, she is aware of, it doesn’t matter what, she has lower than two months difference within the game she began as a 3-year-old. What started as a love for dressed in crimson sparkly leotards evolved into an all-encompassing pastime and one thing that has introduced her nearly the whole thing in her moment.

She stated she is happy for her nearest bankruptcy and hopes to pursue one thing in sports activities media, however she’s acutely aware of the countdown clock that assists in keeping ticking indisposed. Era Dunne’s faculty enjoy has been the rest however standard, her hopes for her ultimate months are identical to most faculty scholars’ of their final semester.

She simply desires to tug all of it in.

“I’m just trying to seize every opportunity and make the most of it and make those memories,” Dunne stated. “The travel meets are some of the best memories you’ll have when you’re a college athlete and being with the girls on the team. Even just practice every day is special. These are my sisters, and that’s something I’ll never forget.”