Mizzou to opt for full revenue sharing, increase ticket prices

COLUMBIA, MO. – Missouri will be among the college programs opting for a legal agreement set to bring revenue sharing to college sports, and will do so “to the highest extent possible,” athletics director Laird Veatch told the Post-Dispatch.

It’s an expected and necessary move for an athletic department with an interest in the hyper-competitive Southeastern Conference, but MU’s intention to share nearly $22 million each year directly with athletes under the terms of the upcoming deal has never been so clearly stated before.

“There’s no doubt about it,” Veatch said. “If we want to compete in the SEC and expect to win, we have to be prepared to do it.”

But to sustain such additional spending, which is expected to increase from year to year, Missouri is preparing to adjust its budget by increasing revenue from existing streams and cutting some spending.

Changes to its revenue generation strategy will include an increase in ticket prices for the Tigers’ football games starting in 2025.

House v. The $2.8 billion antitrust settlement in the NCAA case has far-reaching implications for college athletics overall, from schools’ ability to direct revenue directly to athletes to the elimination of scholarship limits and new roster size limits imposed on sports.

The impact of a single school like MU is largely financial.

“This provides a significant eight-figure impact to next year’s budget and continues to grow,” Veatch said. “We need to help our people understand what this is.”

Veatch was quoted in the Post-Dispatch as saying the results he and his team reached after six months of planning and research on how best to implement revenue sharing without financially ruining the Athletic Department.

It started with a look at the revenue that Mizzou athletics brings in.

Missouri reported revenue of $141.6 million During fiscal year 2023, which runs from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. That value of games for the 2024 fiscal year, which will include the MU football team’s 11-win breakout season and the start of an ongoing sellout streak for this season, has not yet been publicly disclosed.

That value ranks 13th among SEC athletic departments, according to USA Today’s college sports finance database. Only Mississippi and the State of Mississippi had less revenue in fiscal year 2023. As a private university, Vanderbilt’s finances are not subject to the same policies as other public schools in the conference.

MU’s annual revenue was about $100 million on pace for Texas, which was at the top of the conference, and about $35 million below the SEC average.

This stands in contrast to Mizzou’s efforts in name, image and likeness compensation, where the school is considered a trendsetter due to progressive state laws and institution model.

“Our overall approach to fundraising, sales and revenue generation has not evolved that much,” Veatch said. “Therefore, we are significantly behind our competition in terms of revenue generated.”

“A lot of this has to do with football,” he continued, “because we’ve been in a position where we haven’t increased ticket prices for the last several years – 12 years to be exact. So our average ticket price is less than half the average ticket price for football across the conference. Those things come together to create this gap, Right? We have to find ways to close that gap and put us in a position where we can continue to thrive in this new world.”

So Missouri concluded it was time to increase the cost of football tickets. Exactly how much prices will increase is still being determined — Veatch expects the athletics department to share details with season ticket holders and fans around December.

“This is going to have to matter because we are so far behind,” he said.

Twelve consecutive sellouts of Memorial Stadium (all seven home games in 2024 and the final five of the 2023 season) were part of why MU saw the need to raise prices.

“That’s actually one of the reasons why we’re taking this step, raising prices, being more aggressive with fundraising and so on,” Veatch said. “We cannot solve the problem or challenge by selling more tickets. That’s why we have to catch up with our prices.”

While the impact most felt by fans of Mizzou’s entry into the world of revenue sharing is more expensive tickets, the athletics department will look to cut some of its own expenses to maximize existing revenue streams.

In fiscal year 2023, MU athletics spent just a dollar less than it brought in, creating some surplus due in part to direct institutional support from the university.

“We will need to be in a position to generate more revenue,” Veatch said. “We will have to ask our people more. We’ll have to raise prices, right? This will be a must for us. But we also take responsibility in other areas, so we know we need to reallocate spending in a smart and thoughtful way and make really good use of those resources. “We realize that’s part of it, but it’s too big a gap to close overnight.”

Missouri doesn’t see cutting sports as a way to cut costs.

“The only way it’s talked about is if we’re not thinking about it,” Veatch said.

MU will also change the way it provides tickets to its donors in an effort to maximize the value the department receives from its philanthropic contributions. The Tiger Scholarship Fund, which received the grant, currently operates under what Veatch calls an “umbrella policy,” dating back to the 1990s when he first worked on fundraising for Mizzou.

It “allows fans to make a single donation and provides them with football and men’s basketball tickets and parking access,” Veatch said.

Over time, other schools dropped this policy, but Missouri did not; which left him disconnected from his peers. Now Mizzou will “chip up” that policy to make donations more direct.

“We need to find ways to motivate and reward charitable support beyond ticket sales, for example,” Veatch said. “We were a little more transactional here. We’ve had incredibly supportive donors at really high levels. But we need to get more people involved in helping and find ways to motivate and reward that, such as access, benefits and recognition.”

The issue of athletic department finances was a priority when Veatch was hired in April from his previous role as Memphis’ AD. The department’s $1 surplus had drawn outside backlash, and the UM System administration was looking for someone to maximize Mizzou athletics’ chances of getting into the black even as the cost of college sports continued to rise.

In early 2024, the UM Board of System Curators had established a special committee tasked with overseeing the athletics department’s financial efforts, among other duties.

“With the statistics we were seeing, we felt it was an obligation to learn more about what was going on in the athletic department as we fulfilled our fiduciary duty,” said curator Bob Blitz, chairman of the oversight committee. “We’re not trying to pick coaches; We’re not trying to do that kind of thing. “We’re trying to make sure that the athletic department is operating in a fiscally responsible manner and doing the best they can and that they have the best ways to raise money.”

University leadership is cognizant of the fact that the cost of remaining competitive in university sports will continue to increase, especially as accelerator with the coming of the House agreement and eventual revenue sharing. Directly supporting the athletic department may be part of what is needed.

“While we want to make sure that we operate as close to black as possible, we are aware of the future of college athletics if you look at institutional support,” UM System President and MU Chancellor Choi said at the time of Veatch’s hiring. in all other universities – more institutional support will be required.”(tncms-asset)79fd064e-7b86-11ef-8494-0bd83331bafb(2)(/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)342877ae-297c-11ef-add5-0f4869b504e0(3 )(/tncms-a sset)(tncms-asset)5e01d5c0-7125-11ef-aa27-7b10da1fd688(4)(/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)046812b8-6478-11ef-86c4-a3f2bc48cc53(5)(/ tncms-asset)