KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — In what is believed to be the first agreement of its kind, Tennessee fans across all sports will be charged a 10% “talent fee” on tickets to help pay athletes as part of a new revenue-sharing plan that begins in 2025.
The university shared the news with football season-ticket holders Tuesday via email, which included an impassioned four-minute video from athletic director Danny White telling fans that the talent fee and other strategies were “part of a comprehensive plan to continue our dominance in college athletics and build something unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”
In addition to the 10% increase on all ticket bills (season tickets and individual game purchases) as well as donations for those seats, Tennessee will add an average 4.5% increase on all football tickets.
“In this era of name, image and likeness (NIL), there has never been a closer connection between resources and competitive success,” White said, noting that Tennessee had captured the last three SEC All-Sports trophies. “We want to be a leader in college sports. That means we want to be a leader in revenue distribution.”
The NCAA’s revenue-sharing plan, set to begin in the fall of 2025, is part of an agreement between the NCAA and the major conferences in the House vs. NCAA case that would allow schools to share up to $22 million of their annual revenue with athletes. In preparing for those additional costs, schools are becoming increasingly creative in how they raise money, and many university leaders believe the newly proposed revenue-sharing model is just the beginning and that collective bargaining will come at some point.
In the most recent financial data available, Tennessee's football program earned a profit of $75 million in 2023, after $134.9 million in revenue and $59.1 million in expenses.
At most of the nation’s largest schools, football is the engine that helps fund many of the other sports. The Vols have a streak of 15 consecutive sellouts at Neyland Stadium and led the SEC in total home attendance in 2023 with 713,405 fans, an average of 101,915 per game. For two years running, Tennessee has sold all 70,500 of its season tickets, and White said there is a waiting list of 15,000.
Tennessee is enjoying its best stretch of on-field success in any sport in decades. The baseball team won its first national championship in June, and Tennessee became the first school in SEC history to win a conference championship in men’s basketball, baseball and softball in the same year. The men’s basketball team made its second Elite Eight appearance in school history in March, and the football team is ranked No. 6 this week in the AP poll.
“Everyone wanted a winner, and our teams responded in big, bold fashion,” White told fans in the video. “… We're just getting started on this.”
Rather than simply raising ticket prices, school officials said they wanted to be clear and transparent about why this increase is happening and where the money is going, prompting White to record the video. Ticket renewals will begin Thursday and run through the end of February. Tennessee is offering fans the opportunity to spread their payments out over 10 months to help absorb the increased costs.
Now more than ever, Tennessee fans will have to gamble. In 2025, the cheapest season ticket for home football games (including taxes, mandatory contribution and talent fee) will cost $453.75 in the family section, which is on the upper deck. Student ticket prices doubled this season, from $10 per game to $20, and will rise to $25 in 2025.
With the addition of additional scholarships across sports (football will go from 85 to 105), schools opting into the new revenue-sharing plan will need roughly $30 million to cover the money earmarked for athletes and the cost of the additional scholarships.
The Tennessee Fund raised $139.7 million in 2023-24, the largest amount in the athletic department’s fundraising history. The university also announced in August that it signed a lucrative 20-year partnership with Knoxville-based Pilot, which includes the Pilot logo on the playing field at Neyland Stadium.
Tennessee has recently given significant pay raises to administrators and coaches. White is now the highest-paid athletic director in the country (among public universities) at $2.75 million a year after his recent extension, and his contract remains on a six-year, renewable contract through July 2030. He could earn up to $600,000 more in incentives.
Additionally, baseball coach Tony Vitello rose to $3 million annually in August, making him the highest-paid baseball coach in the country.
