Notre Dame Athletics and SoFi Technologies announced a multi-year collaboration Tuesday that makes SoFi the official financial services partner of Notre Dame Athletics and puts its name on the first non-apparel jersey patch to appear across all Fighting Irish uniforms.
The deal goes beyond branding. It creates an annual fund tied to Notre Dame’s 4 for Forever promise, adds scholarship and career support for student-athletes, and gives SoFi a visible place on the uniforms of one of college sports’ most recognizable programs. Pete Bevacqua said that promise is “paramount” to giving student-athletes the best experience in the country, while Anthony Noto framed the partnership as a way to build on Notre Dame’s long tradition of developing champions in the classroom and on the field.
The new fund will support student-athletes through scholarships, financial education, career development and exclusive opportunities, and it will include a student-athlete services hub that brings SoFi’s financial education, planning tools, personalized guidance and products directly to the program. The collaboration also introduces the SoFi Champions Scholarship, which is dedicated to walk-on student-athletes and will recognize one men’s student-athlete and one women’s student-athlete each year with a one-year full tuition scholarship.
That mix of support and exposure is what gives the agreement its weight. Notre Dame is selling the partnership as an extension of its mission, but the arrangement also places a commercial brand on all Fighting Irish uniforms in a way the school has never done before with a non-apparel partner. The trade-off is clear enough: the university gets money, services and fan-facing benefits, while SoFi gets a presence that will be hard to miss every time the team takes the field.
For now, one practical question remains unanswered: the announcement did not say when the jersey patch will first appear on uniforms, and it did not disclose the annual value of the fund backing the 4 for Forever promise. Notre Dame Global Partnerships assisted Notre Dame Athletics on the agreement, and SoFi said its platform now reaches 14.7 million members while its Galileo technology is used across 133 million global accounts, figures that help explain why the company is pushing deeper into sports as well as finance.
SoFi members and Notre Dame alumni and fans will also get ticket giveaways, tailgates and private events around Fighting Irish gamedays and events. That makes the partnership look less like a single sponsorship and more like a year-round relationship, with Bevacqua’s student-athletes at the center and the uniform patch as the most visible sign of how far that relationship now reaches.
