Why Tennessee football will increase ticket prices in 2025
09/17/2024 11:29 AM
Tennessee football is making a bold move to stay head of the changing landscape in college athletics. Tennessee is increasing ticket prices in 2025 to help the program pay players, per Knox News. The ticket increase is being classified as a talent fee.
College athletes will be paid more going forward, due to opportunities in name, image and likeness. A recent lawsuit also permitted former college athletes to profit from NIL, despite it not being around when they were competing. Tennessee’s move is clearly an effort to help the university pay upcoming fees to former players.
The average ticket price increase is expected to be about 14.5%, per the outlet. University of Tennessee officials believe that increase will help them adequately share revenue with football players and other school athletes.
"We've come a long way in the last few years. In this new era, it's going to get a lot more expensive," school athletic director Danny White said. "But there's also going to be a closer relationship between resources and competition than there ever has been before. And our biggest asset is our fan base."
It will be interesting to see if other schools adopt this model to help raise revenue. Tennessee football is considered one of the strongest football programs in the SEC, and the basketball programs have also had a history of rich success. The women’s basketball program holds eight national championships, and the men reached an Elite Eight in 2024.
Tennessee football is offering a payment plan option to ticket holders who want to purchase seats for the 2025 season.
Tennessee must come up with as much as $30 million to pay players
A federal court case is mandating that colleges pay athletes for their services. The terms of how much schools will have to dish out is not yet known, but it is estimated that revenue sharing may have to begin in 2025. Tennessee’s athletic director estimates the school may have to come up with as much as $30 million to satisfy the terms of the upcoming financial settlement.
"It's really a $30 million-plus math problem," White added. "We're not just offloading it to our fans. We are asking them to help us with a portion of it."
There are other options schools are looking into to help raise revenue. But it does seem that ticket price increases may be inevitable at several different places, especially schools that are struggling to raise regular revenue.
The good news for Tennessee football is that there is a strong demand for tickets to their games.
"We have a waiting list of 15,000. So if we were about cold-hearted business, we would probably be a lot more aggressive with our price points," White added. "But this is college athletics, and we have a real passionate fan base.”
Tennessee football is in action on Saturday against Oklahoma.
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