You never know where the UConn colors, insignias or logos will show up. A few years ago, a funny thing happened to Geno Auriemma on the way to the forum, or other points of interest in Rome.
"You associate, when you go to another country, what people think of America by how many Yankee hats you see," Auriemma said. "That seems to be the international logo for baseball in America. It dawned on me when we were on our tour, we were in line to go into the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel and I saw two people with UConn hats on.
"I was like, 'Wow, this didn't happen a few years ago.' You turn around and you go, 'Oh, hey, where did you get that?' And they're like, 'We visited America and we came back with a UConn hat.'"
This was during the UConn women's basketball tour to Italy and the Netherlands in 2017, and the Huskies were already becoming one of "America's Teams," licensed gear always among the top sellers among U.S. colleges. But a lot has happened since to take the UConn brand up several notches: Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, Sarah Strong and another women's championship happened. And Dan Hurley happened, and with him three more trips to the Final Four, Braylon Mullins' shot, t wo more titles for the men.
The success that UConn has had in men's and women's basketball over the last 30 years, and more to the point over the last five or so years, has brought the brand to a still higher power.
The " Basketball Capital of the World " thing happened, UConn applying for a trademark which was officially registered in 2024. Name-image-likeness for athletes and a whole lot of local and national commercials have happened.
Nielsen Media ranked UConn No.1 in brand strength among college athletic programs in the country for both 2023 and '24, its most recently released studies, and in a world in which conferences look to leverage their roster of brands for bigger TV rights deals, it would seem Connecticut's flagship university can leverage this distinction for the greener pastures it seeks.
UConn has had 164 men's or women's basketball games on national TV, most in the nation the last three years, with as many as 15 million viewers. Commercials featuring UConn athletes and coaches generated $35-$45 million in "earned media value" and roughly $11 million annually in corporate sponsorships.
"A compelling story for UConn is their brand power for driving revenue," said Andrew Wheeler, executive VP at Learfield, which works with UConn and schools nationwide in sports marketing, facilitating the partnerships with national brands that resulted in all the March Madness commercials in 2026.
"I'm sure when (AD) David Benedict has these discussions with (conferences) and they promote all the great things about the University of Connecticut, that's certainly an area where their prominence, nationally, in athletics is significant. National brand growth with UConn in the last two years has grown 30 or 40 percent a year for a couple of years."
Benedict recently posted an open letter to UConn fans where he touted the "power of the brand." It's a term that is used in many fields, in many contexts, but what does it mean in this case?
"Your brand, hopefully, is what conjures up emotion or action from somebody," s aid Joshua Shuart, sports management department chair and professor at Sacred Heart University, who earned his doctorate from UConn.
"What do you think when you see that logo, or you hear about UConn? You immediately think of high quality, performance. That's what you're drawing on, the component parts that build that brand. That's why people want to be involved with it. … It puts them in the mix with a lot of global brands, and it's like, you are who you play with, and you're also who you're advertising with."
UConn's brand strength has been achieved without membership in a power conference, without a football program that has contended for national championships, but with a profile built on the visibility of its men's and women's basketball programs. Basketball players, by the nature of the uniforms they wear and arenas in which they play, are more recognizable once they become stars, perhaps, than other athletes.
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UConn's long runs through March Madness with charismatic players and coaches have made for a safe partner for advertising campaigns that run throughout the NCAA Tournament. Last year, State Farm, Invesco QQQ and Marriott were among the brands to partner with UConn for commercials.
"As big as March Madness is and the number of eyeballs that are on that tournament," Benedict said, "when you begin to see a trend with a specific school having their student athletes in a bunch of different commercials, it begins to open people's eyes up. Whether it was me getting calls, or other people associated with the university saying, 'Hey, what are you guys doing? Why are all your guys being featured in commercials?'
"It was both current and former athletes. One, I was proud so many of our athletes were utilized to promote college basketball, and two, it's great for our brand."
Silas Demary Jr., senior point guard on the men's team, said, "Getting those opportunities, it was kind of cool. You're at a basketball school now. My previous school (Georgia) was a football school. So those opportunities moreso went to the football team. So it was kind of cool seeing those opportunities come up, to be able to be in a commercial, a commercial for March Madness. You always dreamed of being in that situation, man, and once you go through it, it's all the things you dreamed about doing."
An inherent, core strength for the UConn brand is its market, or more specifically, it's place in that market. Hartford/New Haven is a top-30 market in the U.S., and UConn does not share it with any pro team, or any other school. Even in an era of shrinking media presence, Hurley stepped up onto the dais after a recent practice and saw two dozen reporters, with a battery of cameras.
"How many people are here for a final exhibition game? That's what makes Connecticut basketball and the University of Connecticut so special," Hurley said. "Take a picture of this and tweet it, because this is incredible."
UConn has had a "horde," as it was known, of local media following the basketball programs for a long time, but the consistent success in basketball and the appearances in major events has made it more like an NFL franchise perennially in the playoffs, winning fans all over the country.
"You would never have 15 or 20 blue-chip global brands partnering with UConn if they didn't realize that's the dynamic of the UConn audience," Wheeler said. "UConn is a relatively small institution, but their athletic brand is so big, and their fan base isn't just alums. It does stretch the whole country. That does drive behaviors for advertisers. Big football programs have big audiences, but sometimes they're very hyperlocal, hypercentric to that state or that market. They don't enjoy Chicago and L.A .and Portland and Dallas and these other markets where, when you see people show up, you see them show up for UConn and they're just fans, they're not all alum."
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In assessing the impact of the school's brand strength, Heidi Bailey, a professor in marketing in the UConn School of Business, refers to the "University Halo Effect."
"When you think about companies paying for advertising, they're looking for eyeballs, right?" Bailey said. "They're looking for not only the engagement of existing fans, but to grow that base and build excitement, and have that 'halo effect' on their brand. If they have association with a winning team, they're building brand strength through having so many people watching those games."
In addition to revenue, and free, world-wide promotion that could be estimated in the tens of millions in value, UConn's athletic brand strength hovers in other ways, calling attention to the university's academic reputation.
For those who believe sports is the "front porch" of a university, UConn fielded a record 62,000 applications from potential Class of 2029 grads, and that number has been steadily growing. Time Magazine, with Statista, ranked UConn No. 111 among universities in the world, and No. 22 among U.S. public universities.
"A strong athletics brand can elevate the visibility and reputation of the entire university," Bailey said, "potentially influencing student interest, alumni engagement, fundraising, sponsorships, and institutional pride. … I do know that UConn is recognized, even globally. When I work with global colleagues, this comes up."
UConn has retained its oak-and-acorn academic logo, b ut it has become a trend for schools to phase out their separate academic logos, either merging it with the sports logo or going all in on a sports-derived logo for broader branding.
Said Shuart: "Instantly, everyone knows the Husky dog and their teams. You'd be a fool if you thought they haven't parlayed that into academic success and success across the board. The quality of the school academically and the competitiveness is exponentially higher using athletics as a way to grow academics."
The consistency of UConn's success builds on itself in recruiting the athletes that keep UConn in the national conversation. Entering this season, which begins Monday night with a rare doubleheader at Hartford's PeoplesBank Arena, the women playing at 5 p.m., the men at 9 p.m., both teams are ranked in the top four nationally, the women No. 2, the men No. 4.
"When you talk to agents around the world about a player they have over there," said Auriemma, who has been recruiting more overseas players in recent years. "She is going to be drafted, going to be a first-round draft pick, but if they have a chance to go to UConn, they would rather go to UConn. If that's happened once, it's happened I don't know how many times. And in this country, the number of people engaged in our social media is the highest in the country, that's got to say something about how much the brand is valued.
"UConn, it doesn't necessarily say just UConn basketball, the exposure in March the last three or four years has been so great. It's getting harder and harder for anybody out there to dispel that it's as big as it is."
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The brand strength gives UConn leverage, but how to use it? A few years ago, Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark was pushing to add UConn, noting "big brands matter," but he was not then able to convince the conference presidents.
It has been quiet on this front, but UConn still needs a home for its independent FBS football program, and may be outgrowing the Big East in men's basketball, as well as the women's game. The billion-dollar question: will any of this propel UConn closer to its ultimate goal of landing in a lucrative power-conference relationship?
"I mean, no one's called me and said, 'Hey, Dave, because your kids are in commercials, we want you,'" Benedict said. "What it is, these are all extensions of our brand, these are all indicators. I don't know what we are (in terms of conference affiliations), but the University of Connecticut has a great brand, we have an unbelievable university academically, we're fantastic in so many of our sports and ultimately, if you're not interested in that, I'm not sure what you WOULD be interested in if you're going to add a school."
Since conference upheaval began about 15 years ago, the Big 12 has added schools like Central Florida, Cincinnati, Houston, BYU, all with bigger football programs, but do they move a needle the way UConn can? The ACC has passed on UConn several times, adding Louisville, Stanford, Cal, SMU, among others; the Big Ten added Rutgers.
"You keep eliminating reasons why people can say, 'You're not this, or you're not that," Auriemma said. "I don't think you need that to be validated. You look at the bottom 10 of a 20-team conference, you think their brand is bigger than ours? You think they're more recognized and respected for all their athletic success? Right now it's just eliminating that stigma of tradition.
"If you think about any other conference, had they, back in the day, said, 'Yeah, UConn is more valuable to us than …' I wont' mention any names, but I think they would go back and say, 'Yeah, I think we screwed that one up.'"
