Welcome to the era of the college jersey patch

Think you’ve seen a logo on every inch of sports stadium and uniform imaginable? Think again.

Earlier this year, the NCAA’s Division I Cabinet approved a proposal that will allow teams to have up to two additional logos on their uniforms and one additional logo on their gear during preseasons and regular seasons (uniform manufacturer logos already appear).

The rule goes into effect on Aug. 1, so there was no sudden influx of jersey patches during March Madness, and it might not happen next year, either, since the proposal only allows for additional logos to appear on uniforms during “non-NCAA championship” games. But come college football season, fans will start to see new logos crop up on the uniforms of teams and in the conferences that moved early to ink deals.

Football and basketball programs are likely to see significant interest, and women’s teams have the potential to drive jersey-patch revenue for schools, too: Wealth management platform Betterment, one of the first companies to announce a college jersey-patch sponsorship, is debuting its logo on the uniforms of the women athletes in the Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10) this year.

“To have strong women athletes, college athletes, representing us, it has a huge halo for our brand,” Betterment CMO Kim Rosenblum told Marketing Brew.

Though the deal spans the whole conference, it is heavily rooted in women’s sports, Rosenblum said, and it could be indicative of future revenue opportunities for women’s college teams, as even some of the best of those programs still struggle for equal treatment.

Better together

Betterment’s “sweet spot” in terms of audience is millennial professionals, but with more Gen Zers settling into financial independence and looking to invest their money, Rosenblum said the company is seeking to build awareness among that generation. Athletes seemed like an obvious inroad.

Betterment already has several individual athlete deals, including with New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye dating back to before he was drafted, and with Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale. Rosenblum said her team felt college athletes were important to include in the mix because they’re earlier in their financial journeys. The deal with the A-10 also gives Betterment access to “a much broader geographic reach” than the brand would have working with individual schools, teams, or athletes, she added.

The partnership includes title sponsorships of the A-10 men’s and women’s basketball championships, the women’s lacrosse championships, and the softball championships starting this season. Betterment jersey patches are set to debut with the women’s teams in the next school year.

The details of the patch rollouts haven’t been fully ironed out, as the NCAA “is still establishing some of the criteria” around that asset, but it was a “pretty important” component of the A-10 deal given the visibility jerseys provide, Rosenblum said.

“It’s a big swing for an emerging national brand,” she said. “Affiliating with this level of college sports feels like it’s elevating us, and I do think that the jersey-patch placements are exciting. Being part of something that is first of its kind is exciting for us.”

Fast break

Betterment isn’t the only brand interested in the asset. Jason Miller, EVP of commercial revenue and head of properties at Excel Sports Management, who’s worked on dozens of jersey deals in pro sports and helped represent Betterment in the A-10 deal, said he’s seeing growing demand among “blue-chip national brands,” though he couldn’t share any more finalized deals as of early March.

“More…are showing interest in the jersey patch, more so than in the pro leagues, because it’s so new and so different,” Miller said. “They see that as a national platform, whereas no matter how much you want to say that a local sports team is a national platform, Duke, Alabama, Ohio State [are] arguably more national than some of the biggest NBA teams.”

In addition to brand execs, DI college athletic programs now also face the task of navigating the sales and implementation of jersey patches “without disrupting the fanbase,” as Miller said one athletic director at a Power 5 school put it to him.

One option for selling jersey patches that some athletic directors are considering is breaking out individual teams as opposed to only doing school- or conference-wide deals, Miller said. It could lead to more attractive price tags for potential sponsors, he said, while also more precisely valuing particularly strong teams, especially in women’s sports.

“I’ve talked to a lot of athletic directors who are saying, ‘Do we pull women's sports out completely and…sell just the women’s sports patch?’” Miller said.

At some midwestern schools like Nebraska, for instance, women’s volleyball draws a large audience, which could fetch a high price for a jersey sponsorship on its own.

“You’ve got to let the market talk,” Miller said.