Stony Brook teams to carry corporate sponsorship patches on team jerseys after NCAA rule change

Stony Brook University will place corporate sponsorship logo patches on its team jerseys this fall, joining a nascent but potentially vast national marketplace created by recent NCAA rule changes.

The deal will put the logo for Bulovas Restorations, a Ronkonkoma-based fire and water damage resolution company, on Seawolves jerseys this fall for football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s lacrosse, baseball, softball and volleyball.

It will generate revenue "in the high six figures" over the deal’s three-year term, making it probably the biggest sponsorship deal in the athletic department’s history after the $7 million naming rights deal with Island Federal Credit Union in 2014 for the school’s arena and some campus programs, athletic director Shawn Heilbron said. University officials said they believed the deal was the first of its kind for New York State and the Seawolves’ 13-team Coastal Athletic Conference.

"The need for new revenue streams is important because the cost of running a major D1 athletic program is growing," said Heilbron. "This will allow us to grow at a time when schools are having to cut back or even cut sports. It allows us to get stronger as a provider of an elite experience for all our student athletes."

In January, NCAA approved commercial logos or patches on Division 1 uniforms and equipment for non-NCAA championship competition, limiting patches to four square inches. At least 11 schools have signed patch deals, including UNLV, which signed a reported five-year, $11 million patch deal with a regenerative medicine company, according to the Sports Business Journal.

The schools are dipping into a revenue stream that professional leagues have used for decades. Primary jersey patches generate an estimated $828 million for major U.S. professional sports leagues, according to SponsorUnited, a firm which tracks sponsorships across sports.

Patches usually go on the uniform shoulder, which is coveted real estate, said Mark Donley, chief revenue officer for Van Wagner College, Stony Brook’s longtime sports marketer, which brokered the deal. "The metrics on how much visibility the brand gets on these positions are really, really high ... Anytime you see an athlete in a still or action shot, or on a video, your brand is visible."

Stony Brook, like many other D1 schools, now faces a cost few had considered a generation ago: athlete pay. A landmark 2025 antitrust settlement between college athletes, the NCAA and major conferences upended decades-old rules intended to enforce amateurism in college sports, allowing colleges to pay athletes for use of their name, image and likeness. For 2026, each school is permitted to share with players up to roughly $21 million in revenues from media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships.

Stony Brook will put its patch money toward facilities improvements and revenue share for athletes, said Heilbron. He said revenue sharing had made it "even more critical to find new dollars." A university representative declined to say how much was shared this year.

Outside of a few programs in power conferences, few D1 teams turn a profit for their schools, and Stony Brook — better known for laboratory research than bowl game heroics — subsidizes its athletic department, which has a $40 million budget. The university fields 20 teams, including a football squad that was nationally ranked in 2024 and a women’s lacrosse squad that reached the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament this spring.

Bulovas principal, Rory Bulovas, was traveling and could not be reached for comment. His company will get television exposure through SNY and CBS Sports Network, which air some of the university’s men’s and women’s basketball games, and through social media. Perhaps more importantly, said Donley, it will benefit from the social media reach of the university’s roughly 135,000 students, alumni and staff in the region — many of them homeowners or business owners who may someday need the company’s services. "That’s pretty good targeted advertising," Donley said.

Jim Andrews, an adjunct lecturer on sports administration at Northwestern University School of Professional Studies, said that the number of college patch sponsorships would probably grow before the fall sports season as major programs, many of which are already in exclusive contract with apparel suppliers, renegotiate their agreements to allow for additional corporate logos.

"Those of us who’ve been around think of this strict line between amateur college and professional sports — that line is basically gone now," he said. "In some ways, that’s a good thing."

Sebastian Regis, a rising junior Stony Brook lineman who was one of the most decorated players in Long Island high school history when he starred at East Islip, said he would be happy to see even a little of the patch money. "You’ve got food, rent, all those things."

He and his teammates will spend much of the summer break lifting weights, running sprints and watching game film. "That’s kind of what they tell you before you sign up for D1: It’s basically a job, and you take every day seriously because it’s not forever and you’re playing a game you love to play." 

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.