Genesis Picks Up a Big Ten Title BMW Once Held in Its First College Sports Deal
The automaker's first college sports partnership starts with football and a trophy delivery in Indianapolis — and lands a designation BMW briefly claimed 15 years ago.
Genesis is taking its US marketing budget to college football. The automaker has been named the Official Luxury Vehicle of the Big Ten Conference, its first sponsorship in college sports and another step in a campaign to make the Korean luxury brand a household name in America.
The deal starts with football. At this season's Big Ten Football Championship at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, broadcast on FOX, the trophy will arrive on the field in a Genesis, and the brand gets activation space at the championship's Fan Fest. Over the following year, the agreement extends to men's and women's basketball, volleyball, baseball, softball, ice hockey, and wrestling.
The audience is the point. The Big Ten now spans 18 schools from Rutgers on the East Coast to USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington in the West, and Genesis cites conference figures of 9.4 million living alumni and roughly 823,000 current students. Financial terms and the length of the contract haven't been disclosed.
A badge BMW used to wear
The designation itself has history. Back in 2011, BMW signed on as the official luxury automobile of the Big Ten, with signage at arenas and reserved parking for BMW owners at conference events. Fifteen years later, the title goes to a brand that didn't exist as a standalone marque at the time.
Until now, Genesis has concentrated its US sports spending on golf: it has been title sponsor of the PGA Tour's Genesis Invitational since 2017, recently extended through 2030, serves as the tour's official vehicle, and backs the Genesis Scottish Open and Tiger Woods' TGL league. College football hands the brand a much larger and younger weekly audience than any golf broadcast.
The timing tracks with the sales charts. Genesis sold a record 82,331 vehicles in the US in 2025, its first year above 80,000, its fifth consecutive year of growth, and enough to outsell Infiniti by a wide margin.
Separately, Genesis extended its NBC Sports arrangement as presenting sponsor of the Big Ten College Countdown pregame show through the 2028 season, covering select Big Ten and Notre Dame broadcasts on NBC and Peacock. The company is also running new spots built around the GV80, produced by NBCUniversal's Rock Studios, that focus on the families behind college athletes.
The first visible payoff comes in December, when a Genesis rolls onto the turf in Indianapolis with the championship trophy aboard.
