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- Upgrading a college stadium? You're thinking about a lot more than capacity.
Upgrading a college stadium? You're thinking about a lot more than capacity.
Different revenue sources have become more important than ticket sales, and as stadiums modernize, schools are focused on premium seating, concessions, Wi-Fi and more.
Kyle Rowland
November 25, 2025
Hey there,
In today’s newsletter, we’ll discuss how the Big 12 continues to find innovative ways to make money and look at a report on college football stadium renovations that sheds light on what shapes the fan experience in 2025 and beyond. Stick around to read up on all the latest news from around the NIL world.
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— Kyle
Turn your ticketing checkout into a powerful NIL revenue engine.
You stabilize your ticketing stack, sales rise, operations run clean. Then NIL, revenue sharing and shifting compliance hit the system. Suddenly, the fan transaction carries more weight: It must fund athletes, recognize donors and stay transparent without hurting conversion.
Programs already prove where this is heading. One major school added a 10 percent talent fee directly to each ticket to support athlete compensation. Ticketing now sits at the intersection of policy, finance, and fandom, and legacy checkouts cannot keep pace. In 2025, treating ticketing as static infrastructure is no longer an option.
The programs that thrive will be the ones that treat the fan transaction as strategy, not plumbing: flexible enough to adapt, transparent enough to build trust and powerful enough to support what college athletics is becoming.
If you want to understand what this shift means for you, let’s walk through it together.
The Big 12 eyes big bucks
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yorkmark is an innovative, outside-the-box thinker. And the conference’s latest blockbuster move fits that mold.
On Monday, the Big 12 announced it is taking a 15 percent equity stake in the Players Era Festival, a college basketball multi-team event in Las Vegas that hands out at least $1 million to each team’s NIL fund. The deal will include a minimum guarantee from annual revenues, and the Big 12 is expected to net at least $50 million per year as part of the five-year deal.
“The Big 12 Conference continues to lead collegiate athletics’ movement into a new landscape, and we are incredibly proud to enter into this partnership,” Players Era Festival CEO Seth Berger said in a statement. “The conference has been instrumental to our growth from day one. The Big 12 now receives guaranteed access to the biggest college basketball event outside of March and it will benefit perennial powers and teams with national championship aspirations. Over the next six years, Players Era will commit no less than $50 million to Big 12 basketball programs in rights fees.”
The inaugural Players Era Festival last year had eight teams. It grew to 18 in 2025. The financial component has quickly made the event one of the most sought-after on the college basketball MTE calendar, diminishing the stature of the Maui Invitational and the Battle 4 Atlantis.
The 2026 Players Era Festival will expand to 32 teams, and the Big 12 will get eight spots as part of the equity deal. The Big 12 school selections will be based on the previous season’s final conference standings.
Opinions on the Players Era Festival varied wildly when the event launched. Some viewed it with skepticism, while others thought it could be revolutionary. The latter is looking more prescient, as the tournament experiences vast growth and interest from college basketball’s blue bloods.
This deal will only solidify the Big 12’s place as perhaps the best college basketball conference in the country. Houston, an annual Final Four contender under Kelvin Sampson, has spent heavily on men’s basketball since the implementation of NIL. The Cougars will play in this year’s Players Era Festival and probably for the foreseeable future.
“We had no choice,” Sampson said last week. “Have you seen our budget? Have you seen our fundraising? We have no choice. We have to raise our money. In recruiting right now, the schools with the most money get the best [players], especially in the portal. You gotta have money.”
According to Sports Business Journal, ESPN, Fox, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery are interested in taking over the broadcast rights from TNT in 2026.
This is the latest in a slew of money-making deals in recent months for the Big 12. Monster Energy, Edward Jones, PayPal and AllState have all signed contracts with the conference to the tune of more than $100 million combined.
“My business, the business that I’m in, candidly, is value creation for my membership,” commissioner Brett Yormark told SBJ. “Wherever I can create value, it’s incumbent upon me as the commissioner to explore it. This is a way to do it.”
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Orange Crushed
The first quarter of Saturday’s Notre Dame-Syracuse game had to be seen to be believed. The Irish scored 21 points before their offense even took the field, returning two interceptions for touchdowns and blocking a punt for a TD.
Notre Dame led 35-0 at the end of the first quarter and ran 12 offensive plays.
DOWN TO BUSINESS
Colleges look beyond capacity in stadium renovations
Elevate, the global agency network that provides marketing and fan engagement services for brands and universities, released a 14-page report last week, titled “Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Stadium,” a fascinating study of trends in college football stadium renovations.
The chase to 100,000 seats was a meaningful target in the 1990s and early 2000s, as the college football facility arms race reached its apex. It was a time when ticket revenue was one of the most critical pieces of financial stability for athletic departments, while the 100,000 number was a source of pride.
There’s been a capacity adjustment as different revenue sources have become more important than ticket sales. One component is the age of college football stadiums. In the power conferences, the median stadium age dates to the 1930s. In the NFL, it’s 2001! Obviously, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison, because colleges can’t just build new stadiums like billionaire NFL owners can. Land constraints and tradition are also part of the equation.
The biggest reason for recent, current and future college football stadium projects is that premium seating and the dollars associated with it provide a financial windfall at a time when paying athletes is paramount. Elevate found that there’s nearly $6 billion worth of construction underway in 2025. The average young alumnus (age 22 to 32) is willing to spend 28 percent more on premium seating.
Premium seating options remain a small percentage of overall stadium seats, but they make up almost half of ticket revenue, according to Elevate. A recent survey of one power conference fan base found that 80 percent of fans are interested in one premium seating option.
The magic bullet beyond premium seating is using a stadium for more than the six to eight home football games each year. Concerts are booming, as well as Savannah Bananas games, rodeos and monster truck events. Several power conference schools have gone one step further and built entertainment districts around their stadiums.
Changes inside stadiums have mostly been prompted by technology and the drive to improve fan experiences. Perhaps the most stark difference comes in concessions and what’s offered today compared to two decades ago. Self-checkouts, grab-and-go-stands, mobile delivery and mobile pick-ups are ubiquitous at college football games. Food and beverage offerings have expanded, concourse layouts have been widened, the number of restrooms has increased, and fast, reliable Wi-Fi is a must-have at any venue.
Every game is an opportunity for an athletic department to draw new fans and turn them into return customers. Spending is viewed as out of control in college sports, but in some areas, the outlays are justifiable. We’re flooded with entertainment options, people have families, and sometimes the weather is a factor. If you want people to return to a football stadium, the seats better be comfortable, the concessions need to taste good and be delivered in a timely manner, long restroom times are a no-no, and not being able to access the internet is a dealbreaker with a continually online populace.
It’s not 1994. Every game is on TV. People don’t go to football stadiums to sit on metal bleachers and cheer on Old State U. College sporting events are increasingly becoming social hubs, where fans want to be comfortable and hang out. The game is one part of the experience.
More news and links:
Sportico has a terrific breakdown of UMass’s failed pursuit of FBS football success.
NIL is now legal for Ohio high school athletes after state principals approved a referendum.
Former Tennessee men’s basketball player Zakai Zeigler is moving forward with a lawsuit against the NCAA, seeking to recover potential NIL payments.
In an op-ed for the Hill, former West Virginia and Ohio State president Gordon Gee said college athletics is in crisis and called for the consolidation of media rights.
ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT
Run, Doris, run
Alabama’s Doris Lemngole defended her NCAA individual cross country national championship over the weekend, pulling away in the final half-mile to defeat BYU freshman phenom Jane Hedengren, who had won every race she entered this season.
Lemngole’s winning time (18:25.4) was 13 seconds ahead of Hedengren. Lemngole, who represented Kenya with a fifth-place finish in the steeplechase at the World Athletics Championship in September, is the first 6K back-to-back national champion since 2010-11.
The sophomore has rewritten the NCAA record books, with multiple national championships and blistering times. She signed an NIL deal with Swiss running brand On in August and is in line to receive additional compensation in a sport that can be lucrative at the elite level.