The University of Tennessee’s NCAA football has decided to add a 10% talent fee to the price of tickets to games for the 2025 season, in addition to a 4.5% price increase for each ticket.
The players need to “remain flexible,” according to Danny White, head athletic director of Tennesse.
Christopher Clark, an economics professor at GCSU, offered his perspective to help get a better understanding of why teams like Tennessee may increase ticket prices.
“College football fans are fanatics,” Clark said. “The Tennessee Volunteers have an inelastic demand. Mostly able to pass their costs off to the consumers, and most of the time, those consumers will continue to purchase tickets.”
In terms of elasticity, an inelastic demand relationship is one in which the demand for a product remains relatively constant even when economic factors change. As in this case, even with just the 10% increase in ticket prices, ignoring the other almost 5% increase, the Volunteers will most likely not need to worry about fans no longer purchasing tickets.
“If the Volunteers pull this off and their fans continue to sell out stadiums, other teams will likely follow in Tennessee’s footsteps,” Clark said.
With the way the Volunteers have played throughout the past few years, their fans will not start attending fewer games; however, smaller teams most likely will not be able to implement an extra fee on top of their already high ticket prices.
Students at prominent universities can often get into games for as little as $10; however, that’s no use for non-student fans who still want to cheer on their favorite team live. For example, Univeristy of Georgia non-student fans can purchase season tickets for a little over $500 or $80 per game.
Retail ticket sites like Ticketmaster have been known to add on extra fees to bring in revenue for their business. Resellers will take that supposed price of $80, and because the demand is so high, increase its price. Add on the extra fees reselling applications place upon the tickets, and fans could spend even triple the ticket’s original price.
With an additional cost coming from the talent fee, Tennessee fans can only imagine how much resellers may start selling their tickets for. This allows for ticket resellers to make a better profit, turning a simple 10% tax into whatever the resellers want to increase their price.
“I think it can be good for the sport until it starts getting abused by, like, free agency,” said Mason Etter, a sophomore marketing major.
The ability to sign college players to NIL [Name, Image, Likeness] contracts began in the summer of 2021, and many teams have started to treat the opportunity of signing players to NIL deals a bit like a college-free agency. Getting paid significantly influences which team a player will choose to join, but this impacts smaller programs heavily.
“I still think that the college degree should be the number one factor for a lot of guys and not necessarily the money,” Etter said. “Many players may disagree depending on why they are playing for a specific team, but the degree should also be an essential factor in which college a team chooses. Less than 2% of college athletes go pro in the long run.”
“I don’t think all sports should be paid, I think the most viewed sports should be paid,” Etter said. “A lot of funders want to fund sports that they want to watch.”
More prominent sports will make money on the side depending on how popular the department is. This money is not necessarily supposed to be put towards NIL deals for players, yet multiple teams have been looked into on the subject.
“NIL, in theory, is a good thing, yet colleges use Name Image and Likeness in the wrong way, more just to pay the players,” said Ty Soukdhaysong, a freshman finance major. “The UNLV situation kind of exposes NIL. There are many loopholes in the NIL system.”
This hints towards the current drama that took place between freshman QB Matthew Sluka and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in which the athlete decided to redshirt the current season after four games due to not receiving the NIL money that he and his agent agreed upon with the organization.
“You should get “X” amount of money for games played,” said Soukdhaysong, explaining how he believes NIL should be restructured.
NIL deals have possibly given students a little too much. Yes, the NCAA is a business, and yes, it is extremely easy to impose the costs of NIL deals onto the consumer, but the price of these deals could be considered too much by the average fan.
