Tennessee tickets raised to fund “talent fee” to pay players

Fans of the University of Tennessee’s football team will see their ticket prices hiked by a “talent fee” to pay players more.

Tickets for the 101,000-capacity Neyland Stadium are to increase by an average of 14.5% in 2025. That figure comprises an organic 4.5% rise plus the 10% addition of the “talent fee”, in what is believed to be the first arrangement of its kind.

The “talent fee” is a response to the NCAA’s new revenue-sharing plan, which is scheduled to begin in 2025. It is part of a settlement between the NCAA and power conferences in the House vs. NCAA case that would allow schools to share up to $22m of their annual revenue with athletes.

In preparing for those added costs – which the University of Tennessee estimate to be more than $30m per year – schools are becoming increasingly creative in how to raise money, and many college leaders believe the revenue-sharing model recently proposed is only the beginning with collective bargaining coming at some point.

In a video, University of Tennessee athletic director Danny White told fans the talent fee and other strategies were “part of an extensive plan to continue our dominance in college athletics and build something like never seen before.”

White added: “In this era of name, image and likeness (NIL), there has never been as close a connection between resources and competitive success. We want to be a leader in college sports. That means we want to be a leader in revenue sharing.

“It’s really a $30m-plus math problem. We’re not just offloading it to our fans. We are asking them to help us with a portion of it.”

The 2025 increase comes on top of tickets doubling from $10 to $25 this year.