St. Joseph’s becomes first college in Pa. to add jersey patch sponsor

The uniforms of all 19 St. Joseph’s athletic teams will have a slight change this fall — it will feature a sponsored jersey patch.

On Wednesday, St. Joe’s announced a partnership with Main Line Health to feature the local healthcare company’s logo on the school’s uniforms. The new uniform emblem was made possible after the NCAA Division I Cabinet approved the addition of “commercial logos or patches” on team uniforms in January. St. Joe’s is the first athletic program in Pennsylvania to publicly announce a jersey sponsorship for the upcoming academic year.

“We’re going to be a leader amongst all this change,” St. Joe’s Director of Athletics Ashwin Puri told the Inquirer. “We’re going to embrace it. We are going to be uniquely St. Joseph’s in all these, all this legislative change and this … transformation — we’re going to do it our way.”

Jersey patches, although new to college, have become a lucrative endeavor for professional sports teams in the United States. The MLS, MLB, NHL, and NBA all allow its franchises to strike uniform sponsorship deals. Recently, the Golden State Warriors made headlines after partnering with IREN to make the Artificial Intelligence company the team’s primary jersey sponsor. The deal was reported to be worth more than $50 million a year.

Meanwhile, in college, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, reportedly inked a deal with the medicine company Acesso worth $11 million over the next five years.

St. Joe’s did not state how much the deal is worth, but it is expected to bring the school increased financial flexibility. Last year, St. Joe’s opted in to the House v. NCAA settlement, meaning the school is now required to sharing revenue directly with its student-athletes.

For Puri, the recent changes to college athletics — from the rise of Name, Image, and Likeness deals to the onset of jersey sponsors — are “all related.”

“We are going to prioritize our student-athletes first and obviously the greater university community by finding partnerships that benefit everybody,” Ash said. “It’s holistic.”

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Eric Laudano, the Hawks associate athletic director, spearheaded the deal with Main Line Health, alongside Mark Donley and Steven Brown, both hailing from the school’s multimedia rights operator Van Wagner. Main Line Health will now also serve as the exclusive medical provider for St. Joe’s athletics. Puri explained that this was the original goal of the partnership, noting it “wasn’t about the patch” at first.

“The conversation started with, ‘How can we bring everything together under one integrated healthcare system?’” Puri said. “Hospital, orthopedic, primary, physical therapy, athletic training, radiology, all the medical specialists — that was the goal. So the conversation purely started with what’s in the best interest of our student athletes.”