Danny White taking ideas from professional sports to optimize Tennessee athletics

Danny White knew all he needed to know this time last year, when Tennessee football was in the midst of selling 17,000 new season tickets. All because Josh Heupel had led the Vols to a 7-6 record in his first year as head coach.

“To sell 17,000 new season tickets that year was shocking,” White said recently during an appearance on the Ramon, Kayla and Will show on 104.5-FM The Zone in Nashville.

But, in reality, it was more than the new on-field product from the football program that led to the “shocking” number of season tickets sold. A large part was due to the in-house strategy for ticket sales introduced by White, who wanted to model that part of his athletic department after what is done in professional sports.

“We built an in-house outbound ticket sales staff that you would see in every NFL and NBA front office in the country,” White said during the radio appearance. “And you’re not going to see that in very many college athletic departments.

“That was more than double the amount of season tickets we had ever sold in an offseason.”

Tennessee sold 9,000 more new season tickets this offseason, after Heupel led the Vols to their first 11-win football season since 2001, ending the year with a 31-14 win over Clemson in the Orange Bowl in Miami. 

Tennessee’s athletic department announced in May that it had sold out its entire allotment of 70,500 season tickets and had a season-ticket renewal rate of 96 percent. 

White and his staff last year introduced the ‘Rise Glorious’ campaign, which included aggressive season-ticket benchmarks through the 2026-27 athletic year. The plan called for selling 70,000 season tickets four years from now. 

“In an era of stadium downsizing,” White said in a press release announcing the sold-out season tickets, “Vol Nation continues to send a strong message that its passion is unrivaled with over 70,000 season tickets sold …

“We envisioned that goal by year five when we launched ‘Rise Glorious,’ but Vol Nation’s unwavering support and the excitement surrounding the program allowed us to eclipse that benchmark in year one.”

It’s all part of White’s plan to optimize every square inch of Tennessee athletics, both on the field and off.

“Literally every part of our revenue model, our business model, we’re looking for the best ideas,” White said. “We’re playing a little bit of catch up in some areas right now. We talk about our action statement with our strategic plan is to lead the way in college sports. And I want our student-athletes to feel like that’s their role as Volunteers, as Tennessee Vols, and all of our staff.” 

“So where can we steal ideas from the pros? And where can we come up with new ideas that hopefully others are following?”

Tennessee last month announced it was in the early stages of exploring a potential “Neyland Entertainment District,” a space between Neyland Stadium and Thompson-Boling Arena that would include a hotel, condominiums, restaurants, sports bars, shopping and entertainment, along with taligate space. 

Plans for the area would be similar to The Battery outside of Truist Park in Atlanta, the new ballpark build by the Atlanta Braves, or LA Live, the entertainment space outside of Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. 

“The entertainment district,” White said, “I think is one that really has been proven to be a winner in multiple markets around the country. And we sit in Knoxville with a big population. It’s not a small college town, it’s America’s best college sports city. And I think it could really be highly successful here, where you have two venues, you’ve got two teams playing in the arena, men’s and women’s basketball, you’ve got obviously football in Neyland. You have concert opportunities. All those things mirror these different entertainment districts in pro sports.”

“But on top of that, we have 30,000 students that are here every single day. And a huge campus population … I think there’s just a great, great opportunity to capitalize on the water front and do something really, really cool that we’re all excited about.”