Below are the top NIL headlines from the McDonalds All American Game:

Social Media Dominance:

Headlined by BYU commit and #1 overall recruit AJ Dybansta, the roster of the McDonald's All American game featured 48 of the best high school seniors. Dybansta has the biggest social media following by far with over 465,000 Instagram followers, with Duke commit and #3 overall recruit Cameron Boozer being the next closest with 158,000 Instagram followers. This has helped Dybansta secure lucrative NIL deals with brands such as Red Bull and Nike. 

Forbes is reporting that Dybantsa is getting close to $7 million in NIL money including a $5 million base from BYU plus his deals with Nike and Red Bull. 

Boozer has signed NIL deals with companies such as Crocs and Doordash. Cameron and his twin brother Cayden who was also part of the McDonald's All American Game are both going to Duke next season and do NIL deals together. One of their most recent NIL deals is with Leaf Trading Cards.

The male participants are all verified on Instagram besides Kentucky commit Malachi Moreno. This amounts to 96% of the male athletes in this event being verified. The mean Instagram followers for these 24 male athletes is 62,873 and the median is 31,750.

Female Athletes in McDonalds All American Game

When comparing this to the 24 female athletes that are in the McDonald's All American Game, you get very different social media following.

Aaliyah Chavez the #1 recruit on the women's side is heading to Oklahoma next year. She is also the most popular on social media with over 84,000 followers with the next closest being over 28,000 for the #3 overall recruit Jasmine Davidson who is playing at USC.

Chavez has a unique NIL deal with Topps but the launch of cards won't happen until she is at Oklahoma due to the announcement for her commitment only happening last week. Davidson has been dominating NIL for a while now with Nike being her big NIL partnership. This NIL deal mainly focuses on Nike shoes and Davidson helping on social media and in person events.

Only 42% of the female participants are verified on Instagram which makes it harder for them to get exposure on social media. The mean Instagram followers for these 24 players is 11,654 and the median is 6,729.

It is interesting to see the changes in data compared to two years ago for the 2023 game:

The social media following is higher by a large margin in 2023 but that is because Bronny James is such an outlier that he skews the data. At the time of the MCDAAG for Bronny James he had 7 million Instagram followers at the time. That is why the median for the 2025 participants on the male and female sides are higher in 2025 than 2023 but the mean number is so much higher in 2023 than 2025 for the male side.

2024:

Last year was dominated by Cooper Flagg and the numbers from last year are about 20% higher in the amount of followers for male and female but that is mainly attributed to a stronger class of players on both sides. It is interesting to see that last year at this time Flagg had 665,000 Instagram followers and now he has over 1 million Instagram followers.

The Duke brand is the best in college basketball by far, and helps the players get more NIL deals and for more lucrative amounts.

The most common NIL representation for the MCDAAG players in 2025 is Klutch Sports with these players signed with the agency: Caleb Wilson, Koa Peat, Isiah Harwell, Aaliyah Crump, Deniya Prawl.