Washington State is set to announce the most significant sponsorship deal in the athletic department’s history. The school is slated to unveil a five-year, $8.43M deal with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation that will touch everything from jersey patches to content series and youth clinics in tribal communities.
“We were talking through the tradition the tribe has in this area and so many of their tribal members that have gone to WSU, shared vision and shared values,” Washington State AD Jon Haarlow told Sports Business Journal. “As those conversations came to blossom and obviously NCAA makes changes and what can happen related to jersey patches, we thought, ‘Wow, this could be a perfect partnership.’”
The deal, which was brokered by Playfly Sports, will include a slew of assets across Washington State’s athletic programs, along with Colville Tribes entitlement games, Nike N7 games for men’s and women’s basketball and prominent integration across WSU athletics platforms and game-day experiences.
The agreement also includes a $250,000 donation to the Cougar Athletic Excellence Fund in Year 1, regional basketball development opportunities, and an AAU tribal tournament.
“One of the reasons that we brought them on board was the ability to have some of these visions and connect some of these dots as we’re going through this transformation of all the different revenue streams now,” Haarlow said. “Honestly, the conversations were tremendous and just a long history [between WSU and the Colville], it made a lot of sense.”
Washington State becomes the first Pac-12 school and just the eighth Group of Six athletic department to unveil a jersey patch deal since it was made allowable by the NCAA earlier this year.
Playfly has also helped broker deals for LSU and Michigan State.
