Tennessee is adding a surcharge to football season tickets in 2025.
The school told season-ticket holders Tuesday that ticket prices would go up by an average of 14.5%. Ticket price increases are common from year-to-year across all sports. What makes Tennessee’s unique is that a majority of that increase will go toward paying players.
The 10% surcharge is being called a “talent fee.” The money from the surcharge will go into a revenue-sharing pool for players as early as next season as schools are inching closer and closer to directly paying players.
“We’ve come a long way in the last few years. In this new era, it’s going to get a lot more expensive,” [Tennseee athletic director Danny] White told Knox News. “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.”
The NCAA is close to a settlement in the House’s antitrust case against it. As part of the settlement, schools would be allowed to share revenue with athletes. Since its inception, the NCAA has been adamant that players are amateur student-athletes and cannot be paid directly by the schools themselves. Any name, image and likeness money athletes have made in recent years has come from third parties and booster collectives.
The settlement would allow schools to pay players via the revenue-sharing pool and would decrease the reliance on third-party payments for athletes. All third-party payments to players could end up needing approval from a clearinghouse before agreements with players could be finalized.
Tennessee’s move is likely also going to be more like an earlier adopter than an outlier. Do not be surprised if other schools follow the Vols’ lead in the coming weeks and months, especially after the House settlement is finalized and schools know for sure what the revenue-sharing agreement will look like.