By james art 
Monday, November 4, 2024 | 7:33 in the morning
Tennessee is adding a “talent fee” to the price of sports tickets. In Arkansas, they will charge 3% more at concession stands. At Michigan and Michigan State, athletic directors sent out letters warning boosters that winning would start costing more. And first, Clemson will begin adding an athletic surcharge to tuition bills.
Winning in major college sports has never been free, but in a rapidly changing era where players are allowed to earn money and get paid by their own schools, it’s never been clearer that fans will reap -large part of a section.
“College athletics hasn’t professionalized as much as I think it’s been capable of,” said Nels Popp, a sports business professor at the University of North Carolina who believes most schools still rely more on emotional, long-term school ties of fans than bottom-line marketing strategies. “And now I think that’s forcing them in that direction.”
When the NCAA reluctantly approved payments to players for use of their names, images and likenesses (NILs) in 2021, boosters who previously gave to schools and their athletic departments began funneling money to collectives — independent organizations that collected the money and they paid the athletes. These collectives are becoming more and more closely related to universities.
Under the terms of a $2.8 billion court settlement that is set to take effect next year, the NIL deals will remain in full effect and the schools themselves will deal with other multimillion-dollar changes to their bottom lines, including:
— Each school with the money would be able to share up to $22 million in annual revenue with athletes — money they get from ticket sales, television contracts and other sources. They may share less, but the best recruits will be at the top of the talent race.
— The amount the NCAA pays more than 350 Division I schools each year will drop. The organization is on track to cover about $1.2 billion in damages under the settlement, and the rest will be covered by conferences that will share less money each year than the NCAA and its lucrative men’s basketball tournament.
“Schools will be allowed to offer more scholarships for all sports, and that costs money.” For example, a school may offer up to 20 additional scholarships for a total of 105 in football. Michigan athletic director Ward Manuel said adding multi-sport scholarships could add $29 million in education costs to the department’s bottom line. And that’s in addition to revenue sharing.
“Maintaining a high level of support for our 29 NCAA sports programs will require a greater commitment from everyone,” Manuel wrote to Wolverines fans last month.
One option for Michigan could be placing advertising inside Michigan Stadium, a practice the Wolverines have steadfastly avoided over the decades. The school also sent out a recent survey asking, among other questions, whether fans would be willing to pay between $3,000 and $4,000 for a new tranche of chairs that are rare outside of the club sections at The Big House.
Not all fans sign amid ‘donor fatigue’
In 2023, it cost an average of about $180 for two fans to attend a college football game and about $340 to go to an NFL game. After all, college sports didn’t have to worry about the biggest expense in a professional team’s budget—player salaries.
NIL has started to shake off that, and once the terms of the court settlement take effect, that dynamic will change even more. Michigan State AD Alan Haller told Spartans fans that his department’s ’25-26 budget will include between $25 million and $30 million in additional spending.
“As a department, we will continue to explore new opportunities to both generate revenue and contain costs,” Haller said. “However, without a doubt, your continued generosity and involvement will be paramount in our pursuit of excellence.”
Some fans will undoubtedly continue to write checks to keep the players – and hopefully the wins – coming, along with retaining their “rights” to buy a certain number of tickets to football games.
A walk around the parking lot before the Michigan-Michigan State game this season found others who sounded more reluctant.
“The cost of education is out of control,” said Michigan State fan Mike Bouchard, citing a cost of more than $55,000 for an out-of-state student to attend his alma mater. “There is absolutely no way I could reach more than that amount in my pocket. Tell them to use their hundreds of millions in donations.
“Absolutely not,” Ann Arbor resident Michael Ketzlak said when asked if he would give more to support Michigan athletics. “I think it’s too much. It’s bad for the sport.”
Rick Karcher, Eastern Michigan athletics faculty member, said fans continue to pay because unlike professional sports, where everyone knows the profits go to billionaire owners, college economic models are often hard to pin down.
“College sports fans, students and college students are willing to continue to shoulder the operating costs while the coaches and team administrators get richer because they view athletics as separate from the university,” he said.
Schools are looking for other ways to absorb higher costs
Earlier this fall, Texas Tech said it budgeted $14.7 million for this fiscal year — about $9 million more than the previous year — to support the athletics program, which has a budget of nearly $129 million.
“I think if any unit on this campus was faced with a 20-something percent reduction in revenue, we would have to look at how we could respond, and we will in this case,” explained school president Lawrence Shovanek.
Texas Tech is hardly alone in contributing to its athletic program, but not every school follows the same model. In Florida, for example, the sport is governed by the University Athletic Association, which not only funded the sport, but often gave money back to the school.
A story in the student-produced Florida Independent Alligator says UF sports revenue is eighth in the nation; two of its top donors have given eight-figure sums to UAA’s fundraising department.
It’s clear, though, that it’s not just eight-figure donations that will sustain college sports.
Tennessee was among the first to grab headlines early in the football season when AD Danny White said the school was adding 10 percent “talent” to football ticket renewals for 2025. That was in addition to a 4.5 percent price increase on the tickets.
“The link between resources and competitiveness has never been closer,” White said. “Only now do we have the ability to share these resources with our athletes.”
Arkansas AD Hunter Juracek explained the 3 percent fee on concessions in a letter to fans noting the importance of continuing to “maximize additional revenue opportunities.” is to raise between $7 million and $8 million by adding a $150 “athletic fee” per semester to the cost of tuition. The Tigers have been to four national title games in the last decade and won them twice.
“I think it’s kind of ridiculous, but there comes a point where we have enough good sports teams that it’s kind of valid,” student Sam Gault told South Carolina’s WSPA-TV when the fee was revealed earlier this month.
To win big, schools will have to pay big, and simply fielding a competitive team is no longer a given. The question hanging over college sports is where the money will come from.
“You can pay more for tickets, put a sponsor patch on the uniforms, stop non-revenue sports or (start calling) the Big 12, “Dr. Pepper Conference,” said Popp, the North Carolina professor. “I don’t think the fans are worried about any of them, but what might they be willing to accept? I think athletic departments need to understand that.”
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AP sports writer Larry Lage of Ann Arbor, Mich., contributed