Ripple Lands Jayhawks in First-Ever NCAA Jersey Patch Deal — XRP Touchdown 🏈

Ripple has signed a five-year sponsorship with the University of Kansas Athletics, becoming the first crypto company to secure a jersey patch deal with an NCAA Division 1 program and placing the XRP logo on the football, basketball and all other Jayhawks uniforms starting today. XRP also becomes the official cryptocurrency of Kansas Athletics. The deal reconnects the Jayhawks with Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, a University of Kansas graduate who previously described watching Jayhawks games as a "guilty pleasure."

Kansas Director of Athletics Travis Goff framed the agreement as a response to a changing landscape. "This era of college athletics demands innovative, forward-thinking partnerships," Goff said in a statement. "Ripple recognizes the unique reach and passion of the Jayhawk community, and we're proud they have chosen Kansas Athletics as a premier platform to introduce XRP to millions of sports fans." Men's Basketball Coach Bill Self added: "It's a critical time in college athletics to be bold, and that's what is being accomplished with today's announcement. We will make sure our guys understand the significance of the partnership and why it is beneficial for them moving forward."

Beyond the jerseys, Ripple will fund educational programs focused on traditional finance and digital assets for Kansas student-athletes and seek to connect KU graduates to careers in technology, per the university.

The move places Ripple alongside other crypto firms that have pushed into U.S. sports marketing, including Coinbase, which holds a long-standing sponsorship deal with the NBA, and Ledger, which in June of last year signed a sponsorship agreement with the San Antonio Spurs placing the Ledger logo on Spurs jerseys and the arena floor. It also follows past crypto deals that ended poorly: FTX bought naming rights to the arena that hosts the Miami Heat NBA franchise in 2021 before the logo was torn down less than two years later following founder Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud conviction, and Terra signed a five-year sponsorship deal with MLB's Washington Nationals in 2022 whose logo remains on the ballpark even after that network's collapse.

Separately, source coverage cited that XRP futures rose about 1% on the partnership news, while spot $XRP fell roughly 4.2% to trade near $1.07, down from an all-time high of $3.65 last year and giving the token a market capitalization around $67 billion.