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Texas raising football ticket prices to support new scholarships created by House v. NCAA

Joe Cookby:Joe Cook•about 9 hours•

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Matthew McConaughey, Chris Del Conte
Matthew McConaughey, Chris Del Conte (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

Of all the sweeping changes made to college athletics made by the House v. NCAA settlement, one of the most important is the change in roster sizes and scholarship limits. Athletic departments have to find new ways to fund larger rosters and still have enough money for revenue sharing with the student-athletes. This week, Texas revealed one of the methods it will utilize to fully fund every sport up to the allowed roster limit.

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The House settlement removes sport-by-sport scholarship limits and only creates roster limits for the sports sponsored by the NCAA. However, conferences can create tighter restrictions. Once the settlement is approved, it means Texas has to fund 466 scholarships instead of the previous 266.2.

The Longhorn athletic department could choose not to fully fund, say, the full 68 scholarships for the national championship rowing team or the 25 scholarships for baseball, a number up from 11.7. But that’s not what the plan is. The Longhorns are going all out.

“This is the University of Texas. We’re good at everything. We are going to fully fund every single one of our sports at the highest division,” Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte said Wednesday. “When you look at this list and see here’s new, you can go with beach volleyball from six (scholarships) to 19 (scholarships), by God we’re going to 19. When it says you can go in women’s indoor (volleyball) from 12 to 18, we’re going to go to 18 full rides. When you look across the board, every single one of those sports, our obligation and my obligation is to fund them at the highest level.”

There are certain limitations in place via the SEC. The House settlement guidelines state that baseball teams can roster up to 34 fully-funded scholarship players. But the SEC reportedly plans to place the limit at 25, at least in the upcoming 2025-26 year according to Yahoo Sports. Similar applies for football, where the limit is 105. The SEC is only permitting teams to carry 85 scholarship players, which seemingly allows for 20 walk-ons.

For every sport, Texas plans to reach every limit over the next three years.

“Let’s just take a sport that plays nine people but they have 20 scholarships,” Del Conte said. “They may not need all 20. But I told them we will max you out. For the next three years, we’ll go up in every single sport incrementally. At that point in time, they’ll come back and say if this is working for us or not. But you know how it is, maximum becomes the minimum.”

That increase in scholarship volume by 75 percent, plus the publicity rights due to student-athletes starting in July, is going to cost money. Combined, it’ll cost Texas $29.7 million. Del Conte said Wednesday that despite what was described as new revenue, budget reductions, and staff efficiencies, $10.7 million was unfunded to date.

“I believe we can grow our new revenue,” Del Conte said. “I think we can do some things here that will make changes.”

One change? Increased ticket prices for 2025.

“One of things I’m looking at is, how are we going to fund everything we’re doing? Publicity rights? How are we going to fund new scholarships? How are we going to do the things we’re going to do,” Del Conte said. “I look at you and say I’m a steward of your precious dollar. One of the things we’re going to do is we’re going to increase football season tickets by $13 per game, or $80.”

Donation requirements will remain at the grandfathered level, per Del Conte. But whether it’s tickets in Tier 1 or seats in the premium club, every level of ticket price is going up for 2025.

“I’m going to raise the season ticket prices a little bit to help defray the cost of what we’re doing,” Del Conte said. “I’m doing this, y’all, because I’m trying to maintain the very best athletic department in the country.”

In addition, Del Conte said that baseball donations will be de-coupled from football season ticket donations for the 2026 season, a similar move that was made a few years ago for men’s basketball tickets.

Del Conte also mentioned that the athletic department took “4,000 tickets away from brokers and gave them back to you all” for football.

The House settlement changes how athletic departments view every single dollar that goes into their coffers, Texas included. Now that schools have a financial responsibility to players (unless they want to get left behind their competitors), Del Conte is one of many athletic directors that has to find new ways to generate revenue.

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For Texas, one of the first choices was a small increase in season ticket prices.

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