Liv Cooke is a British professional football freestyler, current four-time world record holder, and former world champion. She is a BBCsports presenter and UEFA ambassador, who has previously been awarded the Parliamentary Rising Star and Woman of the Future awards. Although best known for her freestyle football, social media videos, and television presenting, Cooke is also the founder of W1NFLUENCE Ltd and Liv Cooke Properties Ltd.
Biography
Cooke started playing football at a young age having grown up with her two older brothers, Jack and Sam. At the age of 10 she joined Preston North End F.C. whilst also playing in Woodlea Junior School's football team. Cooke went on to study at Balshaw's Church of England High School, where she captained the girls' football team, and signed for the Blackburn Rovers F.C. Centre of Excellence at the age of 14. One year later, Cooke was sidelined by a recurring back injury and discovered freestyle football videos online. She began to learn the basics in her back garden and stopped playing football in 2015 to focus on freestyle. In 2016, at the age of 17, Cooke left Runshaw College early to pursue a career as a professional football freestyler. Since becoming a professional freestyler, Cooke has diversified her career through social media and TV, ambassadorial roles, and founding several companies.
Career
In 2015, Cooke performed freestyle publicly for the first time at St Andrews Infant School in her local town of Leyland, Lancashire. This was quickly followed by her first professional event, where she performed at a Blackburn Rovers half-time show at Ewood Park. Since then, Cooke has become the youngest ever professional football freestyler, performing at events across the globe and working with a number of major organisations. Her work has included performing at Qatar’s national sports day, becoming an ambassador for the UEFA ‘We Play Strong’ initiative designed to get more girls into football, and touring Australia to inspire children to get active. Commercially, Cooke has featured in a Channel 4TV commercial, a number of Adidas commercials, and a LIDL advert. In addition, she has appeared on a number of TV shows including Match of the Day, Soccer AM, BBC and Fox Soccer News. Liv made her competitive freestyle debut in London in August 2016 at the Red Bull Street Style World Finals, where she placed 6th and was the youngest qualifier. Later that year, Cooke qualified for the 2016 World Football Freestyle Championships in Melbourne. She finished second, making her the youngest ever finalist. Cooke broke her foot in the final, which ruled her out for several months. She returned to training in April 2017. In August 2017, Cooke qualified for the 2017 Super Ball open football freestyle championships in Prague. Once there, she won all of her battles to become the world football freestyle champion and the youngest in history to ever take the title. In 2018, Cooke became an ambassador for UEFA Women's Football, launching her own social media-based series 'Play Anywhere'. In 2019, Cooke became a global ambassador for UEFA Euro 2020. In September 2019, Cooke signed as a BBC Sports presenter. This role includes hosting the new MOTDx show, along with presenting features on Match of the Day.
W1NFLUENCE
In May 2016, Cooke founded Girls ATW, which went on to become the world's leading female football freestyle agency. Although successful, Cooke folded the company in 2017 as she focused on training for the World Championships. Cooke subsequently re-branded and reopened the agency in 2019 as W1NFLUENCE, which now has almost 100 footballing talents on its books. As well as being an agency, Cooke uses W1NFLUENCE as a platform for innovation; she designs, produces, and distributes freestyle-specific footballs and other gadgets to assist with freestyle football on the move, free of charge for her fans.
