COLUMBIA, Missouri – The logos of two Columbia companies will appear on the field at Missouri’s Memorial Stadium this season, reflecting the school’s efforts to pursue new revenue-generating strategies amid increasing funding needs in college sports.

Shelter Insurance and EquipmentShare will each have a logo on the Tigers’ field, athletic department spokesman Dave Matter confirmed. The badges will be placed on each 25-yard line and are expected to be there during Mizzou’s home opener Thursday against Murray State.

The financial terms of both sponsorship contracts were not immediately available on Tuesday, but the Sports Business Journal reported that the agreements run for several years.

MU adding field sponsors for this season is no surprise: Athletic Director Laird Veatch told the Post-Dispatch earlier this summer that he was “absolutely” interested in finalizing those partnerships.

“There has to be an interest,” Veatch said. “It has to be something that we leverage and present as an opportunity for those partners – who want to help us, but also really want to help their brand and their company. These are huge opportunities.”

Missouri appears to be the second Southeastern Conference school, after Tennessee, to announce field sponsorship.

The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel has voted to allow logos to be displayed on playing surfaces during the offseason. Under the new rules, programs could also display a central logo in the middle of the playing field, but that didn’t seem like an attractive idea to most programs – especially those in the tradition-rich SEC.

As the cost of competitiveness in college sports rises and revenue sharing with athletes is on the horizon, on-field advertising provides additional revenue at a time when most athletic departments could use it.

““This change allows schools to generate additional revenue to support student-athletes,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a statement following the rule change. “I am pleased that we were able to find flexibility in our rules to allow this for member schools.”

Veatch agreed with this argument.

“I’m really encouraged to see us moving forward on this at the national level as well, because we’re going to need more and more corporate support,” he said. “I think we need to aggressively pursue these types of opportunities. We really need to try to take advantage of these types of things because the prices for the competition are going up.”