Sponsorship Revenue Is Growing Faster Than the Number of Deals

When Major League Soccer told its clubs in February that they could start selling the lower back of their jerseys, it created a single premium asset: a space beneath the number that runs up to nine inches across, sized at roughly four-fifths of the front-of-shirt logo and worth more than any patch on the kit but the front itself. The timing was deliberate. The slot opens after the league’s All-Star break in late July, 10 days after the United States finishes co-hosting the men’s World Cup. Some clubs are expected to pull in more than $1 million a year from it.

This will be the fourth sponsor position on an MLS kit, after the front of the shirt and the two sleeves, and the league framed it as part of a measured, gradual release of inventory rather than a free-for-all.

Across the soccer aisle, the new back-of-kit space is already being sold. Boston Legacy FC, which began play this year in the NWSL, signed Voya Financial as its official lower back-of-kit partner in a multi-year deal that puts the financial firm’s logo across the club’s jerseys, media backdrops, and merchandise, along with a premium suite level at its future stadium. “Our club is built alongside partners who believe in long-term stability,” team president Jennifer van Dijk said in the club’s announcement of the deal, casting a patch of jersey as the front of a much wider relationship.

That instinct, to build one big asset instead of a scatter of small ones, is showing up all across sports, and it explains how teams continue increasing revenue at a significant pace. NFL team sponsorship reached roughly $2.7 billion in the most recent season, according to SponsorUnited, a firm that tracks sponsorship deals across the industry. MLB teams brought in $2.05 billion, the NBA a record $1.8 billion, and the NHL $1.7 billion.

The shape of that growth is the surprising part. In the NBA, sponsorship revenue grew about 11 percent in a single season while the number of deals stayed nearly flat. SponsorUnited found revenue rising close to five times faster than the number of deals, which means each partnership is carrying more weight than it used to. The franchises adding the most revenue have leaned on pricing and bundling their best inventory, folding a jersey patch, signage, and hospitality into one anchor deal rather than selling the pieces one at a time.

No league has proven that out longer than the NBA. It put a sponsor patch on its jerseys back in 2017, and the small logo currently sits on 29 of the league’s 30 teams, with only the Portland Trail Blazers currently without one after their previous patch deal lapsed. Across the league those patches are worth close to $300 million a year, a revenue line that didn’t exist a decade ago. MLB has since rolled out a patch program of its own.

The brands filling the inventory are starting to look different, too. Finance has always been a heavy spender in sports, and it remains the NBA’s largest sponsorship category, now at $318 million, roughly twice the size of the next category down. Technology brought the most new brands into the league this year. And categories that were once rare on a jersey have begun to appear. Tourism boards are among them: the New York Knicks’ patch belongs to Experience Abu Dhabi, a deal the research firm GlobalData estimates at around $30 million a season, the most valuable patch in the league, and the Los Angeles Clippers carry Visit Rwanda on theirs. A few years ago, a destination-marketing budget bidding for space on an NBA jersey would have been a surprise.

The area sponsorship executives are watching most closely is the room still left to fill. Some of the biggest advertising categories in the country are barely present on the field. Pharmaceutical companies are the clearest example. They pour billions into sports television, where their ads run almost nonstop during live games, yet until recently they were nearly absent from jerseys, arenas, and official partner rosters. That has begun to change. Last year Novartis signed on as the NFL’s first pharmaceutical partner of any kind, focusing on its cancer-screening campaigns.

The growth comes with a measure of discipline. The sponsorship software firm SponsorCX has argued that the strongest properties aren’t trimming partner counts for its own sake; they’re sorting quick, transactional buys from the deeper partnerships that justify real investment, pointing to research that a sponsorship tends to work better the longer a relationship runs, even as its cost per result decreases.

Women’s sports are moving fast

Sponsorship across women’s leagues grew 17.5 percent in 2025, more than three and a half times the rate of the men’s leagues, by SponsorUnited’s count, and two leagues are climbing along very different lines.

The WNBA is consolidating the way the more established men’s leagues did, in a fraction of the time the others took. Its sponsorship market jumped 45 percent in one year, from $72.3 million to $105 million, with the value pooling in premium assets. The NWSL reached a comparable total a different way, leaning on a surge of new deals and brand-new entrants instead of a handful of giant ones.

As the younger league, founded more than 15 years after the WNBA, the NWSL is growing the way the others did early on, signing a wide first wave of partners before the consolidation comes. Newer clubs such as Bay FC and the Utah Royals have pulled in brands making their first move into women’s soccer, among them spirits labels, financial firms, and business-services companies.

Part of the draw for brands is everything still unclaimed. Whole categories that spend heavily in men’s sports, from insurance to quick-service restaurants, remain thinly represented in the women’s leagues, which leaves early arrivals room to plant a flag before the field fills in.

Across both the men’s and women’s sides, the market keeps expanding without cooling off. “2026 is definitely the year of sports,” Martin Blich, who leads sports partnerships at WPP Media, told Marketing Brew, adding that the demand many expected to fade “just doesn’t.” The revenue keeps rising. Who writes the next round of checks, and how much fabric is left to sell them, nobody can say yet.

We surveyed nearly 1,700 Americans for our Q2 2026 Sports Fan Index and found that the spending gap between dedicated and occasional fans is 41 points. Our analysis: The growth opportunity isn’t only acquiring new fans, it’s deepening the ones already on board. You can read the complete poll summary and takeaways on our website.

Brian Bille → General Manager, Learfield / Mississippi State Bulldog Sports Properties
Bille will run Learfield’s on-campus multimedia rights team at Mississippi State, leading sponsorship sales and corporate partnerships for the athletic department. He moves to Starkville from the same role at Learfield’s Ragin’ Cajuns property at the University of Louisiana, where since 2018 he grew sponsorship revenue 300% and signed 13 of the program’s current official partners. The job sits at the center of how schools are growing commercial revenue, a priority across college athletics right now.

Elaine Shen → Chief Financial Officer, Los Angeles Lakers
Shen has been promoted from associate CFO to head the Lakers’ finances, after a decade with the team in roles across the business and basketball sides. She succeeds Joe McCormack, the team’s CFO since 1988, who becomes senior vice president of finance in an advisory role. Her promotion comes during a broad remake of the Lakers’ business operation under owner Mark Walter, who took majority control last year and has mostly hired from outside.

Jeff Clennon → Chief Commercial Officer, PGA of America
Clennon will oversee sales, partnerships, media, and licensing across the PGA of America’s championships and business portfolio. He spent more than two decades at NBCUniversal, most recently as senior vice president of advertising sales and partnerships, where he ran a $1.3 billion commercial business. He succeeds Jeff Price, who left at the end of 2025 to become CEO of the Heisman Trophy Trust. The role covers the commercial side of the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup.

Matt Volk → General Manager, Local Media, NBA
Volk will lead a new league office group overseeing local media for NBA and WNBA teams, starting June 22. He was chief operating officer at NESN, where he helped negotiate the deal that kept SportsNet Pittsburgh on the air, and earlier spent 15 years at ESPN in programming and acquisitions. He joins as the NBA develops new local broadcast and streaming options for the 13 teams that lost their regional home when the FanDuel Sports Networks shut down.

Amy Taylor → Chief Executive Officer, Angel City FC
Taylor will oversee Angel City’s football, business, and organizational operations when she starts July 27. She has been CEO of the beverage maker Zevia since 2022. She spent more than two decades at Red Bull, rising to president and chief marketing officer of its North America business, and began her career with the Atlanta Hawks. Angel City is the most valuable club in the NWSL, holding the top spot in Sportico’s valuations for three straight years at $335 million.

Director, Global Partnership Development — Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment (Brooklyn): Prospects and closes new sponsorship partnerships across the Brooklyn Nets, Barclays Center, NY Liberty, and Long Island Nets, plus current and future affiliated properties. The deals run six and seven figures, and the prospecting reaches domestic and international markets and categories. Learn more and apply here.

Director, Talent Strategy & Inclusion — LA28 (Los Angeles): Shapes enterprise talent strategy, employee engagement, and inclusive workplace practices across the organizing committee for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, working with Functional Areas and the People Management team. The role oversees Employee Resource Groups and community talent-pathway efforts, and contributes to career transition and long-term Games legacy work. It builds the workforce for the first U.S. Summer Games in 32 years. Learn more and apply here.

Manager, Communications — Seattle Kraken (Seattle): Handles communications services for the team and its hockey operations department, editing the media game notes, serving as one of the primary editors of the media guide, and scheduling the game-night press box staff. Authors the pregame email for every regular-season game, produces game notes from the preseason to the playoffs, and travels on road trips as the team communications contact when needed. Learn more and apply here.

Assistant AD, Fan Experience — Baylor Athletics (Waco, TX): Owns fan experience and game presentation for men’s basketball and men’s tennis, producing those game days from scripts and graphics to on-court elements, giveaways, and concourse activations — along with leading on-field operations on football game days. Manages two Associate Directors and an Assistant Director of Fan Experience and runs the department’s student worker program, with attendance, revenue, and fan atmosphere set as the measures of the job. Learn more and apply here.

MSUFCU × Michigan State Athletics: The credit union signed a 10-year jersey patch deal that puts its logo on all 23 Spartan men’s and women’s teams, plus practice gear and the football helmet bumper, starting in 2026-27. It’s the first department-wide jersey patch sponsorship in the Big Ten. The Detroit News reported the value in the range of $40 million over the term.

JetBlue × Florida Panthers: The airline renewed and expanded its partnership in a multi-year extension, staying on as the Panthers’ official airline while becoming presenting partner of the newly reimagined Champions Club at Amerant Bank Arena. JetBlue will also debut JetBlue Landing, a new fan destination at the arena, beginning with the 2026-27 NHL season.

Adidas × Real Madrid CF: The kit supplier extended its long-running partnership with the club in an eight-year deal running through 2034, also covering the academy, women’s, and basketball teams. The parties didn’t disclose terms, but Spanish daily Diario AS pegged the annual average at about €120 million ($139 million). By annual average, it edges Adidas’s 2023 Manchester United extension, worth a minimum of $121 million a year.

Otro Capital × University of Utah Athletics: The private equity firm finalized a joint venture with Utah and its foundation to form Crimson Brand Partners, a new for-profit company that will run the school’s commercial operations — branding, licensing and sponsorships, ticketing, digital media, and venue events — across 19 athletics programs beginning July 1, 2026. Coaching, recruiting, and facilities stay with the university. Otro is committing at least $100 million in what it called the first direct private equity deal between a school’s athletic department and a PE firm in major college sports.

See you next Wednesday.