The University of Utah will change uniforms in 2027. After 18 years, the school and Under Armour will let their contract expire on June 30, 2027, and a new outfitter will take the field that fall. Ben Portnoy of Sports Business Journal broke the news Monday night. Both sides confirmed it to the Deseret News within hours.
Under Armour said it looks forward to a strong final season. Utah thanked founder Kevin Plank by name. Then both parties turned toward the future, which for Utah means the most consequential business negotiation its athletic department has faced in a decade.
Except the athletic department may not be the one negotiating it.
How We Got Here
Utah signed with Under Armour in 2008, when the football program played in the Mountain West and Under Armour was a Baltimore upstart trying to crack a market Nike owned. The rest of Utah's varsity sports came aboard in 2011. The relationship outlasted two conference realignments. It did not outlast Under Armour's contraction in college sports.
The numbers behind the current deal are public because the Salt Lake Tribune obtained the contract through a GRAMA request in 2020. The 10-year extension, signed in October 2016, totals $65 million. That headline figure deserves a closer look. Utah receives $1.01 million per year in cash rights fees. The bulk of the value, $48 million over the life of the deal, comes as product allowance, the shoes, uniforms, and gear that outfit 18 varsity programs, valued at wholesale. The contract also included $1.5 million for Utah's scholarship fund, $3.9 million in marketing and licensing opportunities, and performance bonuses worth up to $2 million a year.
That is the anatomy of every major college apparel deal. A modest cash check. A large pile of gear. Incentives on top. The headline number blends all three.
In 2016, that deal moved Utah up from a previous contract Forbes ranked tied for 43rd nationally into the upper tier of the Pac-12. By 2026, the market had moved again.
Why the Partnership Ended
Utah was the last domino. Under Armour signed UCLA to a 15-year, $280 million agreement in 2016, the richest apparel deal in college sports history at the time. Four years later, the company moved to terminate it. Cal left a 10-year, $86 million Under Armour deal and signed with Nike in 2023. The brand lost Stephen Curry, its signature athlete, in November 2024.
Under Armour has not abandoned college sports. In November, Wisconsin's Board of Regents approved a 10-year, $104.5 million extension with the company that commits a minimum of $175,000 annually to NIL contracts with Badger athletes. Under Armour is still choosing partners. It chose not to keep this one. Utah was the last Under Armour school standing from the old Pac-12, and now the company exits Salt Lake City the way it entered in 2008: quietly, on schedule, with a handshake.
The Market Utah Enters
College apparel deals are no longer about jerseys. They are about player payrolls. The House settlement caps direct revenue sharing at $20.5 million per school this year, a figure that rises annually. Money that arrives from a third party, structured as name, image, and likeness compensation, sits outside that cap. Apparel companies figured this out fast.
Tennessee set the template last August. The Volunteers left Nike for Adidas on a 10-year deal worth roughly $10 million annually in cash and product, plus an Adidas-funded NIL program for Tennessee athletes. The school has not confirmed the size of the NIL fund. Front Office Sports reported a multi-million-dollar annual commitment; some outlets have reported figures as high as $10 million a year. Penn State followed a month later, ending a three-decade partnership with Nike for an Adidas deal reportedly worth about $300 million over 10 years. An Adidas executive told Yahoo Sports the arms race that once built facilities now funds rosters.
More than 20 power-conference apparel contracts expire in 2026 and 2027. Utah is one of them. Every school in that line will ask for an NIL component. The complication is that the brands writing the biggest checks have already written several.
The New Machine
Here is where Utah's situation differs from every other school in that line. Six months before the Under Armour news broke, Utah rebuilt the business side of its athletic department from the ground up.
On December 9, the university's board of trustees unanimously approved a partnership with Otro Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, to create a for-profit company called Utah Brands & Entertainment LLC. It was the first deal of its kind in college sports, first reported by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports. Between Otro's nine-figure investment and committed capital from donors, who can purchase stakes in the company themselves, the venture is expected to generate more than $500 million for Utah athletics. President Taylor Randall said at the announcement that the agreement would close in early 2026.
Utah is not selling its athletic department. The university retains majority ownership and full control over coaches, scheduling, compliance, and player decisions, a condition the NCAA required for Utah to remain a member. Otro is a minority owner that receives a percentage of annual revenue. The company's board holds four university seats, two Otro seats, and one seat for a donor, with athletic director Mark Harlan as chair and a president from outside the university running operations. What moved into the new company is the commercial machinery: stadium and events, production and broadcasting, hospitality, partnerships and licensing, brand and content, and finance. Otro brings credentials from the professional ranks. Its portfolio includes the Alpine Formula 1 team, and co-founder Alec Scheiner is a former president of the Cleveland Browns.
Partnerships. Licensing. Brand. Sponsorships. That is the apparel deal. The university spent well over a year building this structure, which means it built it knowing the Under Armour contract expired in 2027. The entity launches, and months later, Utah hits the apparel market. Readers can draw their own conclusions about the sequence. What is certain is that the next outfitter contract is exactly the kind of agreement Utah Brands & Entertainment exists to handle, and it will likely be the venture's first major test.
The NIL connection is explicit. Randall said the venture gives Utah the upside it needs in the revenue-sharing and NIL era. Harlan called it an extreme boost to NIL, citing Otro's experience in the professional space. The need is real: Utah has paid the full $20.5 million revenue share since the system began, with about 75 percent going to football. A Tennessee-style apparel deal, with a brand-funded NIL component layered on top of rights fees and product, fits that mandate exactly.
The bet has another side. Otro's percentage comes off the top of the same commercial revenue that the apparel deal feeds. The exit strategy arrives in five to seven years, and the university holds the right to buy back Otro's stake, at a price that will reflect how much the revenue has grown. Private equity does not invest in college towns out of sentiment. If Utah Brands & Entertainment grows commercial revenue the way both parties project, the cost of Otro's cut will look like a bargain. If it does not, Utah will have sold a share of its ticketing, licensing, and sponsorship income to fund a payroll race that never ends. KSL's own analysis put it plainly: the deal could be a sustainable model others replicate, or a case study in what went wrong. The apparel negotiation is where Utah starts finding out which.
The Candidates
Industry handicapping has already sorted the field. Pat Benson of Sports Illustrated's Jerseys On SI sees three realistic options.
Jordan Brand is the long shot. The Jumpman partners with only 11 college programs, most of which are football-and-basketball-only, including Big 12 members Cincinnati and Houston on the hardwood. Utah needs all 18 sports outfitted. Jordan does not do that.
Nike is the volume play. The Swoosh covers more than half of FBS football and most of the Big 12. Nike and Utah have a history dating back to before 2008. The wrinkle is 45 minutes south on I-15. BYU is a Nike school, and Nike has never minded outfitting both sides of a rivalry. Whether Utah minds is a different question.
Adidas is Benson's pick. The Three Stripes already outfit Arizona State, Kansas, and Texas Tech in the Big 12, and the company has spent the past year planting flags across college sports. Utah offers something Adidas lacks: the only Power Four program in one of America's fastest-growing states. The catch is timing. Adidas just committed enormous sums to Penn State and Tennessee.
One more name belongs on the list. New Balance has outfitted Boston College since 2021 and has been buying its way into the market since. A challenger brand looking for a Western flagship could view Utah the way Under Armour once did.
What a Deal Could Look Like
Utah's current contract averages $6.5 million per year, all-in. The recent comparables run higher: Tennessee at roughly $10 million annually plus NIL money, Penn State at a reported $30 million a year. Utah is not Tennessee or Penn State, which rank among the most valuable brands in the sport. But it is also not the 2016 version of itself, and it now has $500 million in committed capital and Otro's deal-making infrastructure behind it. Where the next contract lands between those poles will say a great deal about how the market values a Big 12 Utah, and how much Otro's involvement changes the math.
The structure matters as much as the size. Rights fees pay the department. Product allowance dresses the teams. NIL money buys rosters, above the cap, for a department already spending the maximum on revenue sharing. And now a fourth question joins the list: how is apparel revenue split between the university and the company that Otro partly owns?
Expect an announcement well before June 2027. Tennessee and Penn State both announced their new partners roughly a year ahead of the switch.
The Question Worth Asking
One more thing bears watching, and the Otro deal sharpens it considerably.
Tennessee routed its Adidas contract through a 501(c)(3) athletics foundation that claims exemption from state public records laws. The terms may never be disclosed. We know what Utah's Under Armour deal pays because the Tribune filed a GRAMA request and the university answered it.
Utah did not create a nonprofit foundation. It created something further from public view: a for-profit LLC with a private equity firm as part owner. If the next apparel contract is signed by Utah Brands & Entertainment rather than the University of Utah, whether GRAMA reaches it is an open question. The Under Armour deal was public because the university signed it. Nobody has yet established what the public gets to see when the signature belongs to the LLC.
Utah built a machine to win the next era of college sports. In twelve months, we will know what the machine's first big deal is worth. Whether we get to read it is the part Utah still controls.
