FAYETTEVILLE — The Arkansas Razorbacks have signed a new sponsorship agreement with Springdale-based Tyson Foods that athletics director Hunter Yurachek touted as “the most lucrative true corporate sponsorship deal in college athletics.”
The five-year deal, the financial terms of which were not disclosed, will place the Tyson logo on jersey patches in all of Arkansas’ 19 sports beginning with the 2026-27 academic year. The Tyson logo will also appear on playing surfaces across campus, including baseball, softball, volleyball, soccer and gymnastics.
The Tyson logo, as well as that of Bentonville-based Walmart, has been displayed on the football field at Reynolds Razorback Stadium and the basketball court at Bud Walton Arena as part of a five-year agreement signed in 2024.
Under the new agreement, the Tyson Foods logos will continue to appear on backdrops for the Razorbacks’ press conferences, and some Arkansas athletes will serve as brand ambassadors for the company through NIL deals.
“It was really important to the Tyson leadership team and is really important to me and our leadership in our department that every single student-athlete in our department and every sport was positively impacted by this partnership,” Yurachek said, “and that's happened.”
In January, the NCAA Division I Cabinet approved a proposal allowing teams to sell jersey patch sponsorships for regular-season games. It was a long expected rule change, one for which Yurachek had frequently advocated.
Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek (left) visits with Tyson Foods chairman John Tyson, Wednesday, March 12, 2025, before the Razorbacks' 72-68 win over South Carolina at the SEC Men's Basketball Tournament at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn. (Hank Layton/WholeHogSports)
Schools are permitted to sell up to two jersey patch sponsorships, but Yurachek said the deal with Tyson Foods makes the company the exclusive jersey sponsor for all sports. Arkansas could still sell additional playing surface sponsorships outside of football and basketball.
Arkansas is the fifth school to announce a sponsor for jerseys worn in competition. UNLV became the first when it unveiled a jersey patch partnership with Acesso Biologics in December, before the proposal was even approved, worth $2.2 million annually for five years. It includes patches on jerseys for football, baseball, and men’s and women’s basketball.
LSU announced a deal with Woodside Energy to place logos on all its uniforms in February. Louisiana-Monroe has an agreement with Samaritan's Purse. Omaha has a jersey patch sponsor specifically for its men’s hockey uniforms.
Other schools previously had sponsors for football practice jerseys before the rule change allowing them on game-worn uniforms.
Yurachek said Arkansas began the process of searching for a jersey patch sponsor last fall, when the issue became an agenda item at the NCAA convention and appeared headed toward approval. Learfield, the Razorbacks’ multimedia rights partner, was already searching for a new naming rights sponsor for the football stadium. Yuarchek said that made it easy to also present opportunities for jersey patch sponsorship packages.
As a longtime supporter of multiple sports — most notably men’s basketball, track and field and golf — John Tyson was at the top of the list.
“Mr. Tyson and I had some conversations about how this might look specific to men's basketball, and then that opened up a broader conversation for the inclusion of all 19 of our sports,” Yurachek said. “Mr. Tyson, [CEO] Donnie King and their entire leadership team see the value of a successful Razorback athletics program to Northwest Arkansas and the state of Arkansas and what that means, not only to their businesses, but businesses across the footprint of the state. I think they're stepping up and really want to show their support, and hopefully that support encourages others to continue to support at an even higher level than they already are.”
An Arkansas fan holds up a sign in support of Tyson Foods chairman John Tyson, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, during the second half of the Razorbacks' 99-84 win over the Texas A&M Aggies at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville. (Hank Layton/WholeHogSports)
The values of many such sponsorship deals go unreported, but according to a January report from Sports Business Journal, citing research conducted by Learfield and Wasserman, patches for college football and men’s basketball programs alone could be worth between $500,000 to $12 million per year depending on brand and market.
In December 2024, Elevate estimated that the top 50 college football teams could fetch an average of $4.6 million annually and men’s basketball teams an average of $1.2 million per year.
The Arkansas-Tyson deal’s inclusion of 19 sports, the exclusivity of the jersey patch sponsorship, plus multiple on-field logo opportunities add up to a large group of assets worth a significant amount of money.
“There will be a number of colleges that will have jersey patch partners,” Yurachek said. “I think a lot of them will have local partners. Ours is a local partner, but it is a national brand.
“When you talk about what you see on NBA jerseys, NFL jerseys, Major League Baseball jerseys and helmets, MLS, international soccer — those are national brands that are being recognized on those teams. And we will have a national brand in Tyson Foods that will be on our jerseys. I don't believe there'll be many universities that will be able to accomplish that. It's really cool that Tyson has stepped up and done this for us.”
