Cal football is getting a new look at home, and this time the name on the field belongs to a company with deep Berkeley roots.
Cal Athletics announced a multiyear partnership with Databricks, the data and AI platform for enterprises founded at UC Berkeley, that will rename the Bears’ home surface to “Databricks Field at California Memorial Stadium.” The agreement also stretches across the program in visible ways, with the Databricks name set to appear on the players’ helmets, on the stadium club level, and in Haas Pavilion through LED signage.
Ali Ghodsi, Databricks’ cofounder and CEO, framed the deal as a return to where the company started. “My co-founders and I came to Berkeley as academics with the belief that data and AI would transform every organization,” he said in a Cal Athletics press release.
“Berkeley taught us to think bigger than anyone thought was reasonable. Databricks Field at California Memorial Stadium is our way of investing back into this community, and a bet on the next generation of founders, researchers, and builders.”
Cal Athletics and Learfield did not disclose the dollar figure or the exact length of the deal, beyond saying the multiyear partnership will be funded through UC Berkeley becoming a shareholder in Databricks. But FOX Sports’ Ben Portnoy reported the agreement is worth $22.8 million for up to 10 years.
The field naming rights are the first at California Memorial Stadium since 2021, when Cal partnered with FTX and renamed the field “FTX Field at California Memorial Stadium.” That arrangement was supposed to last 10 years, but it unraveled quickly after FTX collapsed a year later.
The new deal is already showing up inside the stadium. Learfield, Cal Athletics’ partner in collegiate marketing, released an image of the Databricks logo placed at midfield on the 50-yard line.
The helmet branding will arrive even sooner. Cal’s players are set to wear the Databricks logo on their helmets beginning Oct. 3, when the Bears face UNLV. That would make it the first helmet logo of its kind in the ACC, following the NCAA’s January ruling allowing teams “up to two additional commercial logos on their uniforms and apparel and one additional commercial logo on equipment during the preseason and regular season.”
The agreement also changes the name of the upscale club level previously known as the Stadium Club. It will now be called the Databricks Club.
This latest move fits into a broader Cal push into the AI and tech world tied to Berkeley and the Bay Area. The school already struck a jersey patch deal with Dialpad, another AI company, in a contract reported by On3 to be worth $16 million over the next five years.
New head coach Tosh Lupoi and general manager Ron Rivera have also leaned into the region’s corporate base as Cal has worked to tap into local resources. The school received a record-breaking $88.5 million in gifts and pledges last year, and Lupoi’s office includes a decal showing the San Francisco skyline in blue and gold with names like Apple, Google and Tesla marked on it.
“There (are) 44 Fortune 500 companies across the (Bay) bridge that exist here,” Lupoi told ESPN. “A lot of those are Cal grads that kind of dominate that market.”
Cal’s next game comes tomorrow night, when the Bears host Clemson in a nationally televised matchup at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN.
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