VNC Keynote: Brett Yormark Shakes Up College Sports Status Quo

PHOENIX, Arizona — Selling personal seat licenses for the Big 12 Conference football championship, implementing dynamic pricing for concessions and staging a Big 12 Music Festival are three more novel ideas Commissioner Brett Yormark is pursuing for the league as part of generating incremental revenue and reshaping business models at the collegiate level.

On Tuesday, Yormark, keynote speaker for the VenuesNow Conference, sat down with Oak View Group president Chris Granger to discuss his role in shaking up the status quo in college sports and where it’s all headed in the future.

“What I did at NASCAR, Roc Nation and the Brooklyn Nets has all transferred over to this space, and in many respects, prepared me for it,” Yormark said. “I’m not here to survive, but to thrive to build our brand.”

To this point, the future can be seen in college towns such as Stillwater, Oklahoma, according to Yormark.

Oklahoma State, a member of the Big 12 since 1996, recently sold out four concerts at Boone Pickens Stadium for Cross Canadian Ragweed, an Oklahoma-based rock band staging a reunion. The “Boys from Oklahoma” shows, set for April 10-13 in Stillwater, moved more than 180,000 tickets. The events will benefit OSU’s Name, Image and Likeness effort to pay student-athletes for marketing their brands on campus.

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Yormark mentioned the concerts, the first at 53,855-seat Boone Pickens Stadium since it was renovated in 2009, as one example of how schools need to drive revenue apart from college football, whether it’s NIL or the new revenue-sharing model that’s part of a settlement in a class-action lawsuit over $2.78 billion in unpaid fees for student-athletes.

“One of the things I’ve been advocating for with our schools is to start thinking about non-gameday revenue differently,” Yormark said. “They have to focus on those opportunities to grow revenue, because (that money) will go directly to their athletic departments and fund NIL, especially when you think about revenue sharing moving forward.”

In addition, Yormark would like to see Big 12 athletic departments get more sophisticated in operating their sports facilities, taking aggressive steps to dynamically price food and drink for all events. It’s something he did during his tenure as president of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets when they opened Barclays Center in 2012.

“They don’t even know what I’m talking about when I speak to that,” Yormark said. “Bringing that professional model on campus and getting them to think differently about revenue generation is important for the future of these athletic departments.”

From a conference standpoint, the Big 12 formed a PSL program for the 2025 Big 12 men’s basketball tournament at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, and depending on how well it performs, the concept could be expanded to the football championship game, according to Yormark.

Branded as the All-Access Pass, fans pay a fee for the rights to purchase the same seats for the basketball tournament through 2031 at the 17-year-old arena that operates without a big league tenant. The fees run from $6,000 to $30,000 a seat, depending on location.

The pass is split into two categories. Premium membership, tied to courtside, floor and lower-level sideline seats comes with access to premium clubs with all-inclusive food and drink. Priority membership encompasses lower-level sideline seats with loaded tickets for concessions. There are waitlists for both programs, as stated on the Big 12 sports website.

“We are exploring all options, to break some boundaries and to push things forward,” Yormark said. “At the same time, we want to arm our schools and advocate for them to do the same. This fall, you’re seeing corporate logos on the football playing field. At some point in time, you’re going to see a commercial patch on game day uniforms.”

“Our schools want to do that,” he said. “Those are NCAA-level decisions and we want to control that. You could see some of that decision making and governance become more decentralized in the future.”

Creating a new music festival tied to the Big 12 brand is something Yormark mentioned toward the end of the session. To this point, he doesn’t have any details, but the festival would be an extension for using live music to help tell the conference’s story, such as Nelly’s halftime show during the conference’s 2023 championship game at AT&T Stadium. This year’s halftime performer at the 2025 championship contest will be announced in the coming days.

The first-ever music festival would strengthen the conference brand, connect to its culture and serve as a “rallying cry” for current and future students, Yormark said.

“The settlement will give us a roadmap to enforce things we haven’t been able to enforce before; good NIL vs. bad NIL,” he said. “The fundamental way we operate will change. There will be a salary cap, no different than the big leagues. As an industry, we will continue to grow and (college football) Saturdays will be bigger than (NFL) Sundays.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated.