If you ran a business and had a product that sold out with a waitlist that could’ve bought up 33 percent more of your inventory of that product, basic supply and demand suggests you’re going to raise the price of that product. If you believe in the most fundamental form of capitalism, you should have no problem with Tennessee football raising ticket prices.
Danny White recently announced the Vols would raise season-ticket prices another 4 percent for the 2026 football season at Neyland Stadium. This comes as they’re reducing stadium capacity by about 500 seats to add more premium seating, effectively selling more tickets to people with greater means.
What really upsets people about this move is it comes on the heels of Tennessee football adding a 10 percent talent fee for all season ticket prices while already raising them 4.5 percent this year. Still, even with a 14.5 percent price increase, the Vols sold out their more than 70,000 allotment of season tickets with over 24,000 waitlisted.
Of course they’re going to raise their prices with numbers like that.
Although the sentiment may be there that this is a way to keep up with the NIL age, it likely would happen without NIL. Remember the early 2000s, when UT was still rolling as a program under Phillip Fulmer? It was a different era of the Internet back then, but the UTSports website would always crash as soon as tickets went up for sale.
The long line of people looking to scratch and claw their way into Neyland Stadium for just one game a year during that time, even if it was against a Division II school, led to the program raising its prices dramatically during that era too. Tennessee football fans must have forgotten about that due to years of futility, which is why they couldn’t raise the prices.
If the Vols fall off a cliff again, they will suffer from these price increases and have to slow them again, but you can’t blame them for trying to maximize their revenue. Even before NIL, that was crucial for a program to be elite. There was still an arms race in facilities, recruiting budgets and paying coaches.
Now, though, that NIL is added to the arms race, we can’t pretend it’s not more important. Other schools are going to find ways to maximize their revenue in this era, and the Vols can’t afford to fall behind. The more money they raise, the less they have to solicit from boosters, who can then spend their money on third party “endorsements” for players.
Yes, there’s an issue right now, not just with college football programs, but society in general, realizing a greater profit motive in selling luxury items. It used to be a select group of people could buy luxury, so the move was to sell only a few of those and then sell to the masses at a much more affordable price.
With the K-shaped economy that has defined this era, though, as more people are pushed into the tier that can’t afford even the basic products, more people are also entering the tier that can afford all the luxury things. That means the business model for companies, in housing and sports, is going to be to sell more luxury.
Don’t blame Tennessee football. Blame society for creating this two-tiered economy. White and the Vols just have to keep up, and if they don’t, you’ll have to enjoy UT going 7-5 every year and losing to teams that spend more NIL money. Oh, and if you’re in the lower tier of the economy, you still won’t be able to afford to go to any games. It helps nobody.
