JMI Sports extended its University of Pennsylvania multimedia rights agreement by five years and moved to a revenue-share model, Sports Business Journal’s Terry Lefton reported September 16. The deal also includes rights to the Penn Relays track and field competition, and JMI pointed to sales to 60 corporate partners under the prior agreement over the past decade. Athletic departments with expiring deals now have a fresh comparable.
JMI Sports has another five years at the University of Pennsylvania. Sports Business Journal’s Terry Lefton reported on September 16 that JMI has extended by five years the agreement under which it has sold Penn’s multimedia rights since 2016, and that the renewal comes with a new revenue-share model. JMI cited sales to 60 corporate partners under the prior agreement over the past 10 years.
The deal also includes rights to the Penn Relays track and field competition, according to Sports Business Journal. Financial terms were not disclosed. The report ran in the outlet’s Colleges section under Lefton’s byline, and it attributed both the revenue-share description and the 60-partner count to JMI rather than to the university.
For the athletic director or university business officer whose own rights deal comes up in the next few cycles, the structure is the news. A change from the prior arrangement to a revenue share is the kind of term that gets copied into the next request for proposals. The 2016 start date matters too. The prior term ran the full decade JMI is counting when it tallies 60 partners, so the sponsor count and the contract cover the same 10-year window.
What changed in the contract
Sports Business Journal reported two concrete facts about the renewal: it adds five years to a relationship that began in 2016, and it introduces a revenue-share model. JMI, for its part, pointed to sales to 60 corporate partners under the prior agreement over the past decade. In full, the reported terms are short enough to list.
- Five additional years on an agreement through which JMI has sold Penn’s multimedia rights since 2016
- A new revenue-share model, as described by JMI to Sports Business Journal
- Rights to the Penn Relays track and field competition, which the deal also includes, according to Sports Business Journal
- Sales to 60 corporate partners under the prior agreement over the past 10 years, per JMI’s own count
- Upcoming observances of 150 years of Penn football and 100 years of the Palestra
That 60-partner figure is JMI’s own count, not an audited one, but it is unusual to see a sponsor tally attached to a renewal at all. Sports Business Journal reported it as JMI’s citation of rights sales under the prior agreement, without further detail on who the partners were or what revenue they generated. The outlet put the phrase “corporate partners” in quotation marks, marking it as the agency’s term.
The revenue-share language is where the source is thinnest and where the reader’s questions should be sharpest. Sports Business Journal did not describe the split, whether it replaces or sits alongside a guaranteed payment, or which categories it covers. What it does establish is that JMI called the revenue-share model new, according to Sports Business Journal, which means the structure differs in some way from the one that has been in place since 2016.
A revenue share is a bet that the sales team will keep selling. JMI cited sales to 60 corporate partners under the prior agreement over the past 10 years, according to Sports Business Journal, though neither source says how Penn weighed that figure in agreeing to the new model.
Same agency, very different scale in Kentucky
The Penn extension lands a little over a year after JMI signed one of the largest multimedia rights contracts in college athletics. Athletic Business, citing reporting in the Murray Ledger, reported in August 2025 that the University of Kentucky extended its JMI agreement through 2040 in a deal valued at more than $465 million. Athletic Business’s Audrey Lee described it as one of the largest multimedia rights deals in college athletics history.
That Kentucky contract reaches well past selling signage and radio spots. Per Athletic Business, JMI is to assist Kentucky with strategic name, image and likeness decisions, facilities development and fan experience. Athletic Business also described an earlier JMI-brokered arrangement in which the Kentucky Farm Bureau bought naming rights to the Wildcats’ new baseball stadium, with JMI helping the university promote Kentucky-grown agricultural products in return. The stated aim of that partnership, according to Athletic Business, was to make UK Athletics venues “look and feel like a reflection of the values of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”
Kentucky’s athletic director framed his deal as a revenue play. Mitch Barnhart, in remarks carried by Athletic Business, said the agreement “is about creating the revenue opportunities for our programs and our student-athletes that will help ensure our continued success,” while the mission of putting “championship rings on fingers and diplomas in hands” stayed the same. How the school forges that path, he said, will change. What is known about the Penn deal, Sports Business Journal’s report makes clear, comes from JMI.
Athletic Business listed Notre Dame, the University of Georgia, UCLA and Penn among JMI’s collegiate partners, and described the company as a media rights and venue development firm that also handles project management for facility construction and renovation, naming rights negotiations and brand partnerships. Neither source says whether any of those broader services are part of the new Penn agreement, and this article does not assume they are.
Read together, the two deals bracket the market. A Kentucky contract valued at more than $465 million and running through 2040, according to Athletic Business, and a five-year, revenue-share extension at an Ivy League school sit under the same agency roof. For a mid-major or non-football-revenue program deciding whether an outsourced rights partner is worth it, the Penn renewal is the more relevant comparable; Kentucky’s number is the ceiling, not the template.
A revenue share is a bet that the sales team will keep selling. JMI cited sales to 60 corporate partners under the prior agreement over the past 10 years, according to Sports Business Journal, though neither source says how Penn weighed that figure in agreeing to the new model.
Two anniversaries and a track meet as the inventory
Timing gives JMI something to sell right away. Sports Business Journal noted that Penn will be observing 150 years of its football program and 100 years of the Palestra, its basketball arena. Two dated hooks inside a five-year term is a useful start for a sales agency working on a revenue share. The source does not say the anniversaries were a factor in the renewal or how they will be marketed, but milestone seasons are the kind of finite, dated inventory sponsorship sellers typically build packages around.
The Penn Relays are the other asset that travels. Sports Business Journal specifically called out the meet’s inclusion in the extended deal. For a brand marketer weighing college inventory, an Ivy League school’s basketball and football signage is a regional buy; the Relays are a different kind of property, and their presence in the package is likely part of why the 60-partner figure looks the way it does. That last point is interpretation, not something either source states.
What would confirm the read on the revenue-share model is disclosure, either by Penn through public records or by JMI in a future announcement, of how the split works and whether a guaranteed floor remains. Until then, the operative facts are the ones Sports Business Journal reported: five more years, a new revenue share, the Relays included, and a football program about to turn 150 with a sales agency already in place to sell the birthday.
