NIL
IU football field adds Merchants Bank sponsor, why Indiana needs money
Indiana football: How Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium came to be
The turf at Memorial Stadium will have a new logo on it as part of the college arms race for generating money.
- Fans will notice something new on Indiana football’s field: Merchants Bank is the sponsor of the Memorial Stadium field.
- An unusual growth in the last few years is colleges looking for revenue in creative ways. IU is no different as it looks to maximize resources.
BLOOMINGTON — Indiana Athletics is entering into an eight-figure on-field commercial sponsorship agreement with Merchants Bank of Indiana that will see the Memorial Stadium field named for the bank.
Effective immediately, the playing surface inside Memorial Stadium has been renamed Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium. IndyStar understands Merchants Bank will pay Indiana $50 million over 20 years as part of the agreement.
Exact terms, including the structure of payment across the life of that agreement, were not immediately available.
As part of the partnership, Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium will be prominently displayed on the Memorial Stadium field beginning with IU’s 2025 home opener Aug. 30 against Old Dominion.
The agreement is a first for Indiana, and it reflects the NCAA’s shifting position on schools exploring unconventional revenue streams in an era of athlete compensation.
With revenue-sharing budgets opening at $20.5 million this academic year — and expected to increase annually for the foreseeable future — the association in 2024 approved rules changes allowing on-field commercial sponsorships.
Such opportunities had already begun to open, like Washington’s 10-year, $41 million field-naming rights deal with Alaska Airlines. Now, schools are allowed to sell not just naming rights, but also visible on-field commercial partnerships as well.
Penn State earlier this year secured a $50 million field-naming rights deal with a home remodeling company in Pennsylvania, in another Big Ten-specific example.
Even provided record revenues from the Big Ten’s ongoing media rights deal, IU has nonetheless been buffeted by the expanding financial impact of player compensation, whether via direct revenue sharing or in the push to direct booster money to NIL collectives’ efforts.
Last year, IU Athletics endured a round of layoffs that saw 25 positions eliminated, and 13 employees let go. Athletic director Scott Dolson has been aggressive in recent years in streamlining his department’s financial situation, to better absorb the increasing amount of money being distributed in some form back to athletes.
“We’ve been anticipating this for a while,” Dolson told IndyStar in a June 2024 interview. “Coming out of COVID, because we had a similar exercise in terms of trying to scrub our budgets, scrub our resources, it’s not like this is brand new for us.”
The expansion of on-field commercial opportunities was among the most prominent ways in which the NCAA has attempted to widen revenue streams for its member institutions as a result. IU spent a year exploring potential opportunities, before settling on this partnership with Merchants Bank.
It is not the first high-profile investment by the bank in IU Athletics, albeit the most meaningful in this form.
Merchants Bank has since the inception of NIL compensation four years ago consistently signed IU men’s basketball players as brand ambassadors. Past such partners with the bank — which is headquartered in Carmel — include, among others, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Race Thompson, Trey Galloway and Malik Reneau.
And, it should be said, revenues from such arrangements can be repurposed for uses beyond just athlete compensation.
Indiana is at the moment, for example, attempting to raise funds for a substantial renovation of Memorial Stadium, including significant investment in infrastructure, suite seating and press box areas. With more booster dollars pushed toward athletes in modern college athletics, commercial partnerships like this one can backfill holes left elsewhere.
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