Source: North Texas has reached an agreement with DATCU to become its new stadium naming rights partner

The Denton Record-Chronicle is offering North Texas fans a chance to read all of our content for $1 per month for the entire football season. Sign up here: dentonrc. com/subscribe-now/sports-offer/ North Texas didn’t have to look far for a new naming rights partner for what has been known as Apogee Stadium for more than a decade.

DATCU Credit Union has finalized an agreement to have its name on the 30,850-seat venue that opened in 2011. A UNT source with knowledge of the situation confirmed to the Denton Record-Chronicle on Sunday night that the announcement will be made Monday. The local credit union has branches across North Texas and deep ties to the Denton community.

Apogee, an Austin-based telecommunications firm that specializes in higher education, backed out of a 20-year, $20 million deal a few months ago. Terms of UNT’s deal with DATCU were not immediately available. DATCU teased the announcement Sunday evening with a post on its Twitter account, saying “Something’s coming .

. . ” UNT officials were confident when they began looking for a new naming rights partner that the school’s football stadium would garner interest from a host of companies.

The stadium sits at the juncture of the East and West branches of Interstate 35. “We feel fairly good about the valuation for the stadium with where it is located on the I-35 corridor,” UNT athletic director Jared Mosley said earlier this year. UNT’s plan was to identify a new partner in time for the beginning of the 2023 football season.

The school worked with Independent Sports & Entertainment as it worked through the search process. Mosley told a group of boosters at a closed-door event in June that the school had identified a new partner and acknowledged that the deal was close to being finalized. DATCU turned out to be that partner, one that has a long history in Denton as well as ties to UNT.

In the 1930s, V. Y. Craig and Ross Compton, a pair of professors at what was then known as North Texas State College, joined with 11 other educators to pool $650 and establish Denton County Teachers Federal Credit Union.

DATCU now has more than 100,000 members and has assets in excess of $1. 5 billion. The business serves residents in 11 counties, mostly in North Texas near UNT.

Finding a new naming rights partner was a priority for the school at a key time in its history. UNT made the move from Conference USA to the American Athletic Conference on July 1. The move to a league that also includes SMU, Tulsa and Tulane in addition to UTSA and Rice is expected to increase UNT’s visibility across the state.

UNT officials believed the move to a new league would help them sell a local business on buying the naming rights for the venue. That deal is now in place. .