College football fans are already starting to foot the bill for their athletes getting paid

Fans of University of Tennessee Volunteers, led by quarterback Nico Iamaleava, will begin helping pay student athletes with new “talent fee.”

In the new age of college football revenue sharing, the cost of paying student-athletes is already being passed off — at least in part — to fans.

The University of Tennessee announced in an email to Tennessee Volunteers fans on Tuesday that, beginning with 2025 football season ticket renewals, all football tickets will include a 10% “talent fee” that will go toward paying players.

“As the collegiate model changes, we have to remain flexible,” UT’s athletics director Danny White said in a video explaining the reasons for the price hike. “That connection between resources and competitiveness has never been tighter. Only now, we have the ability to share these resources with our athletes. We can generate revenue that will go directly to our players.”

On top of the 10% talent fee, the university also announced that 2025 ticket prices will be increasing 4.5% per seat on average.

That means tickets will shoot up a total of 14.5% on average in 2025.

“We want to be a leader in college sports. That means we want to be a leader in revenue sharing,” White said.

But football fans aren’t footing the entire cost of revenue sharing — only a portion of it. A spokesperson for UT told B-17 that the talent fee will help cover about 33% of the total cost of paying players. The university will be fronting the remainder of the annual $22 million revenue-sharing pool to pay athletes, Knox News reported.

UT’s spokesperson said the decision was made in preparation for the settlement of the House v. NCAA federal antitrust case, which could go into effect as early as July 2025.

Last May, the NCAA and five major conferences agreed on a revenue-sharing model that would pay student-athletes a portion of the revenue their colleges make from ticket sales, broadcast deals, and merch bearing an athlete’s name, image, and likeness (known as NIL).

But that deal has since gone back into negotiations after the judge overseeing the case paused preliminary approval.

“We are also preparing for additional financial aid, potential compliance, marketing, and other resource development costs that are directly or indirectly associated with the proposed House model,” the UT spokesperson told B-17 in an email. “These include new scholarships, taxes, fair market value assessment, reporting, and other unknown business and legal assessments that may be required.”