Gamecocks Partner with Blanchard CAT for Five-Year Field Branding Deal at Williams-Brice Stadium
South Carolina football fans will notice a new look at Williams-Brice Stadium this fall, thanks to a lucrative five-year sponsorship with Blanchard CAT. Starting with the 2025 season, logos for Blanchard CAT and Blanchard CAT Rentals will be displayed on the Gamecocks’ home turf.
The partnership — with Blanchard Machinery, headquartered in West Columbia and led by President and CEO Boyd Blanchard and Executive Vice President Rozier Blanchard, both USC graduates — will place the company’s marks on the 25-yard lines opposite the SEC logos, which will remain. The Gamecocks’ iconic Block C will still be featured at midfield. The Blanchard logos replace the South Carolina state flag emblems previously positioned at the 25s, though the flags may appear elsewhere in the stadium.
While the school didn’t release exact figures, USC athletic director Jeremiah Donati described it as the “largest individual investment into our athletics program.” USA Today estimates field sponsorships of this type can be worth around $4 million annually.
Gamecock Club CEO Wayne Hiott said the deal goes beyond field branding, including “signage, radio reads, public address reads, title sponsorship of the home-opener against South Carolina State,” and even on-site contributions. “As our stadium project continues … (we’ll lean into) Blanchard CAT helping us actually do work around the stadium,” Hiott explained.
South Carolina will begin a $350 million stadium renovation after the 2025 season. In announcing the partnership, the school called it a “transformative collaboration” that will help fund future Williams-Brice enhancements.
Importantly, the deal does not involve naming rights. “This is simply branding the field,” said Nick Kistler, general manager of Gamecock Sports Properties. “It is not naming (the field.) That’s a big distinction.” Williams-Brice will keep its name.
The Gamecocks are now the fourth SEC program to display sponsor logos on their football field, joining Tennessee (Pilot), Arkansas (Tyson Foods and Walmart), and Missouri (Shelter Insurance and EquipmentShare). Unlike Tennessee’s 20-year agreement with Pilot, South Carolina opted for a shorter five-year term. “You don’t wanna be locked into something too long term when you haven’t ever had it before,” Kistler noted.
The move comes after the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved field sponsor logos last June. While some schools embraced the change, others resisted. “We’re pretty traditional,” Alabama AD Greg Byrne told ESPN in 2024. “Never say never, but we obviously are fairly conservative when it comes to what we do from anything like that.”
For South Carolina, the challenge was finding a partner that wanted more than a logo placement. “You want the brand to be invested beyond just putting the logo on the field,” Kistler said. “I don’t think a logo slap on the field would have been very well received.”
Hiott said the connection with Blanchard CAT was natural: “This is just serendipity. One of Blanchard’s mottos is ‘We Build SC.’ … This just ties perfectly into, one, what we do on a day-to-day basis; but, two, the stadium project.”
