Deion Sanders has a well-known affinity for high-end Ford trucks and, evidently, Ford dealers are just as eager to keep him in the driver’s seat of their marketing.
A sponsorship agreement announced earlier this year between Denver Ford Dealers and Buffalo Sports Properties (BSP)—Learfield’s marketing arm for the University of Colorado—includes contingency language tied to the tenure of the head football coach.
According to a copy of the agreement obtained by Sportico, the regional Ford dealer association will pay BSP approximately $5 million over seven years, beginning with a $665,000 payment for 2025-26, with annual increases thereafter. However, the deal includes a specific “football coach departure” provision: If Sanders leaves the program before the end of the deal, the association’s financial obligation is capped at $665,00 per year for the remainder of the term.
The sponsorship encompasses all of CU’s sports programs but primarily focuses on football. It grants Ford prominent branding rights, including stadium signage, radio placements and hospitality products for Buffalo football games. The deal also includes eight club-level season tickets, field passes for home games and four seats on the team charter for away games.
The agreement was finalized in April, two months before USA Today reported Sanders had been away from the team while dealing with an undisclosed medical issue. Last month, in a press conference filled with product promotion, Sanders announced that he had been diagnosed with bladder cancer and was in remission.
In March, Sanders signed a contract extension with CU that boosted his pay to $10 million this year and keeps him in Boulder through 2029. During his first season as head coach in 2023-24, Colorado’s year-over-year football ticket sales nearly tripled and its multimedia rights revenue increased by 51%.
Under its most recently amended agreement with Learfield, CU currently receives 65% of adjusted gross revenue (AGR) from BSP’s multimedia rights sales on the first $10 million and 70% of any AGR exceeding that amount.
A Learfield spokesperson declined to comment, and a representative of Denver Ford Dealers did not respond to an email.
The dealers association isn’t the first CU sponsor to hedge its investment in the Buffaloes on Sanders’ continued employment at the school. As Sportico previously reported, Aflac’s deal with CU—amended in July 2023 and running through the 2027-28 season—includes a termination clause that triggers if Sanders departs before its contract ends.
Sunglasses company Blenders Eyewear, which signed a two-year, $120,000 marketing and sponsorship agreement with BSP in July 2024, stipulated that it could terminate the deal if a separate endorsement agreement it was negotiating with Sanders was not fully executed.
Other auto dealers have structured their sponsorships differently.
In July, Denver Region Toyota Dealers signed a five-year, $3.06 million deal that will pay Buffalo Sports Properties $609,394 per year through 2029-30. Although there is no Sanders-specific clause in the contract, the Toyota dealers can exercise an early termination right that would end the agreement a year early. (Among other placements, the Toyota logo is prominently featured on the step-and-repeat banner used for Sanders’ weekly CU football press conferences.)
Similarly, Sill-TerHar Motors, a local car dealer in Broomfield, Colo., signed a five-year, $187,345 sponsorship agreement that it can choose to exit after the third year.
Some of the sponsorship deals include other kinds of opt-outs.
For instance, United Airlines signed a three-year, $363,000 deal with BSP in March, conditioned on the university’s athletic department continuing its charter agreement with the airline company. That deal also contains a provision calling for an annual review of the arrangement to determine if “any benefits-related changes (should) be made for the subsequent contract year.”
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