Tower Hill Insurance replaces Exactech on the Gators’ basketball home, and the deal adds athlete NIL access to the usual signage.
The University of Florida has a new name on its basketball arena and no number to go with it. The court inside the Stephen C. O’Connell Center is now Tower Hill Arena, under a deal with Tower Hill Insurance that the school announced on Nov. 11.
Neither the university nor the Gators Wire report on Yahoo Sports disclosed the price or the length of the agreement. The only public benchmark is the deal it replaces. Exactech’s 10-year naming agreement, signed in 2016, was worth $5.9 million and expired this year, Gators Wire reported. That works out to roughly $590,000 a year.
The new package goes beyond a name on the roof. Florida says Tower Hill gets broadcast media assets, digital and social placements, hospitality, VIP experiences and access to student-athlete name, image and likeness opportunities, plus dedicated support for the soccer program. That NIL line is the modern twist. A company buying a building now also buys a path to the athletes who play in it.
The building has a long price history of its own. The O’Connell Center opened in 1980 at a cost of $15.6 million and was rebuilt in 2016 for $64.5 million, cutting capacity to 10,500 seats, according to Wikipedia. It hosts men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball and gymnastics.
Tower Hill is a hometown sponsor. The insurer has been based in Gainesville since 1980, the school said, and the deal was approved by UF’s Board of Trustees. “We’re not just putting our name on an arena,” executive chairman Bill Shively said in the release.
What to watch is whether the price ever surfaces. The Exactech figure is a decade old, and rival athletic departments negotiating their own renewals would like to know what the going rate is now.
Sources
- Florida Gators – Tower Hill Insurance Makes Significant Investment in Gator Athletics with Naming Rights to Tower Hill Arena – https://floridagators.com/news/2026/11/11/tower-hill-insurance-makes-significant-investment-in-gator-athletics-with-naming-rights-to-tower-hill-arena
- Gators Wire via Yahoo Sports – Florida announces major naming-rights deal for O’Connell Center – https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/florida-announces-major-naming-rights-185306790.html
- Wikipedia – O’Connell Center – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connell_Center
Featured photo: Gene Gallin / Unsplash (Unsplash License). Illustrative stock image; it does not depict the people or events in this story.
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