Tennessee plans on raising the price of football tickets by an average of 14.5% to help fund the proposed revenue share for its student-athletes. Current settlement projections suggest that institutions will be able to share revenue with their student-athletes as early as July 1, 2025.

Fans will notice an additional 10% “talent fee” on all ticket invoices beginning with 2025 Football Ticket renewals. UT plans on using this fee to help fund the proposed revenue share for student-athletes, “enabling us to attract and retain the best talent to Rocky Top.”

Fans will also see a “moderate,” per-seat price increase averaging 4.5% across the stadium. Ticket and donation funds will continue to contribute to the overall operational budget. Ticket renewals will began on Monday and the renewal deadline will be Thursday, Feb. 27. Fans will have the option of a 10-month payment plan to help spread out the impact of the increased cost.

UT informed season-ticket holders of the price increase by email on Tuesday morning. They also received a video from athletic director Danny White explaining the decision.

“Over the past four years, our athletics department has worked tirelessly to become one of the best in the country,” Tennessee said. “With the most passionate fans in all of sports, we have grown our self-generated revenues and aggressively reinvested those funds directly into our sports programs. Those investments have led to unprecedented success.

“We will continue to grow our other revenue streams and be efficient with our expenses to maximize the anticipated full revenue share allotment. There has never been a time in college sports where revenue growth had such a close correlation to winning. We strive to equip our coaches with all the resources needed to compete at a championship level and create the best opportunities for Tennessee student-athletes.”

Tennessee has sold out its entire inventory of 70,500 season tickets each of the past two season. There is currently an “interest list” of nearly 15,000 fans.

UT sold 61,490 season tickets ahead of the 2022 campaign when the Vols had their best season since 2001, reaching a No. 1 ranking entering November, beating Alabama for the first time in 15 years and winning 11 games capped by an Orange Bowl victory. That led to last year’s season-ticket sellout, the Vols’ first since the 2016 season. This year is just the third time in the past 23 seasons that Tennessee has exhausted its season-ticket inventory for football.

“Our differentiator will always be Vol Nation, and you have continued to sell out our large venues, showing the rest of the country why we have the best fan base in all of sports,” Tennessee wrote. “Please support us in continuing to build the country’s best athletic department and be a part of our most successful decade yet!”

The Vols led the SEC in total home attendance (713,405) and average home attendance (101,915) last season, those figures ranking third and fourth nationally. Tennessee has sold out 15 straight home games. It also had a 14-game home winning streak under Heupel spanning losses to Georgia in 2021 and last season.

White’s ambitious Rise Glorious strategic plan included benchmarks for season-ticket sales for Tennessee’s biggest programs, and the goals set for football were shattered last year (61,000) and again this year (68,000) by the back-to-back sellouts – the goal didn’t hit 70,000 until 2026.

Tennessee limited attendance for its Orange & White Game in the spring to just 10,000 due to ongoing renovations to Neyland Stadium, as another larger round of upgrades took place over the offseason two years after the addition of the West Club seating behind the Tennessee bench and the upper-level party deck behind the North End Zone. UT continues to strive to modernize the fan experience at the more than century-old stadium, and Neyland’s new WiFi system that debuted in 2023 has been fully functional this fall.