When the Kansas City Chiefs open the season Thursday night with a home game, six-time Pro Bowl quarterback and three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes will be prominently featured as usual.
And Texas Tech football fans shouldn’t have to look hard to see visual depictions of their favorite son’s alma mater. This season is Year 4 of a seven-year partnership agreement in which Texas Tech advertising is displayed throughout Arrowhead Stadium and across Chiefs television, radio, digital and social-media channels.
“It’s a bargain. Bargain, bargain, bargain,” Tech president Lawrence Schovanec said. “When you’re watching the Super Bowl and you see Double T on the screen, what’s that worth?”
For Schovanec, the savvy of Tech’s marketing partnership with the Chiefs was reinforced during an AFC divisional playoff in January 2022, a back-and-forth affair in which Kansas City beat Buffalo 42-36 in overtime. Mahomes passed for three touchdowns that day and ran for one.
“He did that one touchdown,” Schovanec said, “and all the ribbon (board) was Double Ts.”
Schovanec made the comments in August 2023. The Avalanche-Journal planned to run this story shortly thereafter, but a public records request for the contract between Tech and the Chiefs was not fulfilled until late January 2024, after the Texas state attorney general’s office ruled in favor of the A-J’s request for disclosure and after the Chiefs had played their final home game last season.
In a letter to Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Texas Tech attorney said Tech did not seek to withhold the information, but the Chiefs might wish to protect proprietary information. An attorney for the Chiefs subsequently presented arguments to Paxton proposing portions of the contract be redacted before it was disclosed publicly.
Members of the Chiefs’ public-relations and marketing staffs did not respond to emailed questions for this story.
Tech announced the marketing partnership in September 2021 without revealing financial terms.
The contract runs from the 2021 through 2027 seasons, covering Chiefs preseason, regular season and postseason games with either party able to renew for three additional years. Over the first seven seasons, Tech is due to pay partnership fees totaling a little more than $6.47 million, or an average of $924,700 per year. If the deal is renewed and lasts for 10 years, the partnership fees total only a few hundred dollars less than $10 million for an average of $999,942 per year.
The annual installments started at $795,000 in 2021. With 5% annual increases, Tech’s payments are $920,312 this year, $1,065,377 in 2027 and, if the three-year option is exercised, $1,233,306 in 2030.
Additional fees are owed for Chiefs playoff games and Super Bowl appearances. Those are 7.5% of the year’s installment per home playoff game and 3.5% for each away playoff game and Super Bowl.
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