Insurance brokers are rarely household names, and many have been happy to keep it that way. Well, maybe not Marsh, they’ve paid umpteen million to splash themselves all over Formula 1.
It could be that Marsh (profits nearly $28 billion last year to June 2026) have so much money that they can afford to send all the management team off to rub shoulders with clients in the Lewis Hamilton lounge, but when one of the country’s largest independents pays to put its name on the walls of a Major League Soccer stadium, it’s fair to ask what it expects to get back.
Earlier today, Houston Dynamo FC named Higginbotham its official insurance broker under a multiyear agreement. The package includes naming rights to the smallest premium hospitality lounge at Shell Energy Stadium, a space previously known as the Bayou City Club, along with LED ribbon signage on match days.
Higginbotham will also be the presenting partner of the club’s youth camps and clinics. It will sponsor “From the Pitch to the Classroom,” a social media series that follows Dynamo players and staff on school visits. Hopefully this will blow up to be as good as Welcome to Wrexham (Hello from Houston? You’re welcome). Lacking Ryan Reynolds (and the other guy), maybe not.
Neither side disclosed the length of the deal, its price, or (at least in the announcement) what the rebranded lounge will be called.
The club’s chief revenue officer, Nicolò Zini, said the goal is a “true B2B platform” where season ticket holders and local businesses can meet and make deals. That phrase is the key to whether the deal makes sense for both sides. For the Dynamo, premium hospitality has been a priority for several years. When the stadium took its current name in 2023, the club unveiled expanded premium areas and a larger indoor club for premium seat holders. A broker that will fill a lounge with business clients (or even staff) is an ideal tenant.
Read next: Acrisure lends name to NFL team’s stadium in new deal
For a commercial and benefits broker, the room matters more than the name on the scoreboard. An air-conditioned lounge with food and drinks included is a ready-made place to host CFOs, HR directors and prospects in a relaxed setting. That is how middle-market business gets won.
Koby Hackradt, Higginbotham’s chief operating officer of employee benefits, said the firm’s Houston-based employees and clients would get to use the space. He has spent years building the firm’s business in the region. In 2022, as Houston managing partner, he led Higginbotham’s acquisition of a College Station benefits agency. That deal brought the firm’s greater Houston office count to five. A year later, its tie-up with Houston’s Iscential doubled its presence in the city, according to the firm.
The bigger reason may be branding. Higginbotham has grown mostly through acquisitions. Its longtime private equity backer, Stone Point Capital, reports that as of November 2025 the firm had acquired and integrated more than 130 partnerships since 2009. Higginbotham describes itself as a top 20 independent insurance, financial and HR services firm nationally. The pace continued this year with deals in Indiana and South Carolina.
Roll-up brokers often find that the agencies they bought are better known locally than the parent. Acrisure’s marketing chief, Elliott Bundy, made that point in a 2023 interview with Crain’s Detroit Business. He said that because Acrisure grew through hundreds of acquisitions, its purchased local brokers frequently held more brand equity than Acrisure did, which pushed the company to invest in its own brand.
Sports is also becoming a line of business for Higginbotham, not just a marketing channel. In January the firm launched NIL insurance for college athletics programs and donor-backed NIL groups, with Hall of Fame coach Urban Meyer advising. Its other sports deals include title sponsorship of the Northern Texas PGA’s Texas State Open. In 2025, youth baseball platform Perfect Game named Higginbotham its official life insurance partner. In my analysis, a presence in a pro club’s hospitality space helps the sports practice reach the owners, executives and athletes it wants as clients. Higginbotham has not drawn that link publicly.
Read next: Higginbotham enters South Carolina with Turbeville Insurance deal
The trouble with sponsorship is proving it pays, and the industry admits it. In a December 2025 report, the World Federation of Advertisers and consultancy Lumency found that brands devote roughly 11% of marketing budgets to sponsorship. They typically spend less than 1% of sponsorship budgets on measurement, and nearly three-quarters of practitioners call proving ROI a top challenge. Most measurement still focuses on awareness and consideration rather than sales impact. That research covers large multinational brands rather than brokers, but the gap between spending and proof is the same one Higginbotham will face.
Acrisure offers the closest comparison. After it put its name on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ stadium, its own surveys of people resembling its small and midsize business customers found awareness went from roughly zero to 5 percent, Bundy said. He told Marketing Brew that the awareness was producing client conversations and revenue, though he wouldn’t share numbers. He also said the stadium deals ran alongside a targeted digital campaign. That makes it hard to say how much credit belongs to the stadium. And after an NFL naming deal, about 95% of the target audience still didn’t know the name.
