Tennessee Capitalizing on NIL With 'Talent Fee' on 2025 Season Tickets

The football program is looking for every advantage it can get in the player empowerment era of college athletics.

Tennessee is adding a "talent fee" to its season tickets for 2025 in an effort to boost its NIL for the football program. / Angelina Alcantar/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The University of Tennessee is adding a 10% "talent fee" to its 2025 season tickets for football, the program announced to its season ticket holders by e-mail on Tuesday. The new talent fee cost will be used to pay its players through Name, Image and Likeness (NIL).

The 10% talent fee added to the season tickets is part of a 14.5% price hike overall for 2025 season tickets. Tennessee athletic director Danny White told season ticket-holders with an accompanying video that it's the price of doing business in the upcoming revenue sharing era in college athletics, which will add to player compensation.

"We've come a long way in the last few years," White told Adam Sparks of the Knoxville News Sentinel. "In this new wea, it's going to get a lot more expensive. But there's also going to be a closer relationship between resources and competition than there ever has been before. And our biggest asset is our fan base."

Tennessee's football program has poured money into its NIL efforts and has dedicated plenty of money to head coach Josh Heupel, who earned a new contract in early 2023 that is paying him an average of $8 million per year.

In return, Heupel has Tennessee playing like one of the top teams in the country through the first three weeks of the 2024 season. The Volunteers are 3-0 and ranked No. 6 in the AP poll. They travel to No. 15 Oklahoma in primetime on Saturday night in one of the games of the weekend.

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