adidas AG (ADDYY)

What Kaleena Smith's Adidas NIL deal means for high school athletes

Adidas (ADDYY) has signed 16-year-old Kaleena Smith, making her the first high school girls basketball player to be signed by the company to an NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) deal. Smith is also the first signing under WNBA legend Candace Parker, who is the president of Adidas Women’s Basketball. This week on Yahoo Finance Sports Report, host Joe Pompliano discusses the deal and what it means for high school athletes in the future. "This is a growing trend that we all need to be paying attention to, and that trend is high school athletes signing NIL deals. Now, there's 39 states and Washington DC across the United States today that allow high school athletes to sign NIL deals. There's 11 states that do not allow high school NIL deals... But this is going to be changing in the immediate future. I expect more states to enact NIL legislation, so rather than just college players, high school players can sign these deals as well," Pompliano says. To hear more, check out this week’s episode of Yahoo Finance Sports report here. Yahoo Finance Sports Report with Joe Pompliano, a vodcast brought to you by Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports, looks beyond the latest sports business headlines, analyzes all the need-to-know news — the teams, trades, and billion dollar deals — so you and your portfolio will win BIG. Yahoo Finance Sports Report is developed and produced by Lauren Pokedoff. This post was written by Mariela Rosales.