Jersey patches for South Carolina in 2026? Here’s what we know
We’re at least a week away from seeing South Carolina’s new-look football jerseys.
What we know: Those jerseys will feature the Nike logo. What is still up in the air: Will another brand’s patch will accompany the swoosh?
“I think that’s the million-dollar question,” South Carolina AD Jeremiah Donati told The State in late May. “We’re still testing the waters. Our apparel partners (Nike) are going to have some guardrails that we will abide by, so we’ve got to be mindful of that partnership as well.”
The opportunity for college teams to adorn their uniforms with a corporate patch — in the same way NBA teams have done for nearly a decade — only came about recently, when the NCAA approved all Division-I teams to sell jersey space to corporate sponsors.
It continued a trend of NCAA flexibility to allow schools additional means of revenue as the cost of running an athletic department has skyrocketed in the NIL and revenue-sharing era. First came the permission for field logos — which South Carolina took advantage of, partnering with Blanchard CAT ahead of the 2025 season. Now come the jersey patches.
But as of June, only 17 schools in the country had locked in a jersey patch deal. And just two of those are SEC schools: Arkansas (Tyson) and LSU (Woodside Energy).
“There’s just not 100 brands lined up for these types of sponsorships,” Donati said. “So the key is finding someone that makes a lot of sense for us. We’re not going to devalue our product, so it’s got to be someone that’s willing to pay what that opportunity is worth.
“And we’re not going to execute a deal until we get the right deal,” Donati said. “We’re not going to do a patch deal just to do a patch deal. We’re going to get the right deal. But we’ve had some good interest and those conversations will continue; and there’s a national play and there’s a local play.”
Which begs the question: How much could South Carolina earn from a jersey patch?
The short answer: Millions annually.
The long answer: It’s unclear exactly how much these sponsorships are worth but, of course, the bigger and more visible a brand, the more money real estate on their uniforms is worth. Some estimates have alleged that a football and men’s basketball jersey patch could be worth up to $12 million. Others have said that a blue-blood college basketball program could garner $3 million to $5 million by itself.
But, as the NBA proved, there will be disparity. When the NBA launched jersey patches in 2017, the average deal was worth just over $9 million, but that figure was buoyed by the $20 million sponsorship that the Golden State Warriors agreed to with Rakuten.
“We’re trying to learn a lot from what we saw in the NBA. At first, everyone rushed to a patch and now there’s a huge disparity in values,” Donati said. “You probably saw the deal Golden State just signed, but there’s some really kind of bad deals in that market, too. So we want to take what we can learn from that process to make sure that we get the best partner and the most value possible.”
The other thing to consider with these college jersey patches is how wide-ranging the deal can be.
Could every program be bundled and sold to one corporate sponsor — as LSU and Arkansas did — so every team at a university is aligned? Could a brand opt to sponsor just one team, as is the case with Omaha hockey (Control Services), USF football (Tampa General hospital)? Or, as Wyoming did with football and men’s and women’s basketball, find a sponsor that wants its patch on the uniforms of a few select teams. Perhaps there’s an option carved out for just women’s sports teams.
“Those are conversations you’re going to have directly with the potential sponsor partners,” Donati said.
