Galaxy Digital pens Texas Tech $75M stadium deal, expands beyond local data centers

Under the terms of a 15-year deal reported at roughly $75 million, Galaxy Digital (NASDAQ: GLXY) has agreed to rename Texas Tech’s football stadium Galaxy Stadium. 

The agreement, starting with the 2026 season, ends the Jones AT&T Stadium name that the Red Raiders have called home for decades.

Why is a data center company putting its name on a college football stadium? 

Galaxy Digital (NASDAQ: GLXY) has signed a 15-year deal to rename Texas Tech University’s football stadium to Galaxy Stadium, starting with the 2026 season. 

Sports Business Journal reported that the deal is worth about $75 million over the full 15-year term, or roughly $5 million per year. The figure was confirmed by Texas Tech Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt.

Galaxy’s stadium deal is directly connected to its Helios data center campus, located about 60 miles east of Lubbock in Dickens County, Texas. The site is a former Argo Blockchain Bitcoin mine that the company bought in late 2022 for roughly $65 million.

On July 6, 2026, Galaxy announced it had completed Phase I of the Helios campus, delivering approximately 200 megawatts of gross power, 133 megawatts of which covered critical IT load, to CoreWeave under a 15-year lease agreement. That lease is expected to start generating revenue in the second quarter of 2026.

The Helios campus spans more than 2,200 acres and has a total approved power capacity of 1.63 gigawatts, with the potential to scale to as much as 3.6 gigawatts. The project is backed by $1.4 billion in financing. 

Galaxy said Texas Tech graduates already work at the Helios site, and the stadium deal could lead to future work together on AI research and workforce development. 

Beyond the stadium name, Galaxy becomes the official data center and digital assets partner of Texas Tech Athletics, and its branding will appear across football and both men’s and women’s basketball through digital, social, and in-game placements. Galaxy’s logo will also appear at midfield. 

The deal also includes name, image, and likeness (NIL) opportunities for Texas Tech athletes through branded campaigns and original content. 

Do the crypto and AI industries sponsor sports?

For data center operators and AI infrastructure providers, sponsorships offer visibility with a broader audience. The University of Kansas recently gained Ripple as a sponsor. The university will be the first top U.S. university sports program to have a cryptocurrency logo appear on its jersey. 

Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, is a Kansas alumnus, and the deal was reportedly for five years. 

AI cloud firm IREN (Nasdaq: IREN) also signed a jersey-patch deal with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, reported at more than $50 million per year. The deal makes IREN the Warriors’ official AI cloud partner and includes sponsorship of the WNBA’s Valkyries as well. 

IREN’s co-CEO Daniel Roberts explained that the goal of the Warriors deal was getting “on the radar of the Bay Area’s many AI startups.” Similarly, Galaxy’s sponsorship puts its name in front of Texas Tech students, alumni, and the West Texas community, where it is making a major investment.

The stadium’s previous naming rights deal with AT&T expired in June. The name “Jones” had been carried by the stadium for nearly eight decades, honoring Texas Tech’s third president, Clifford B. Jones, whose $100,000 gift helped build the venue that opened in 1947. 

Texas Tech said it will share details later on how it plans to keep recognizing Jones around the stadium grounds.