Colorado Football’s $14M Ticket Revenue Surge Amid Revival

BOULDER, Colorado — Colorado suffered a second straight loss to a Pac-12 opponent, falling 48-41 to USC on Saturday — but five games into the Coach Prime era, the football program has already achieved monumental financial success.

Ticket revenue for football games is up $14 million from last season, the school tells Front Office Sports — that’s about half the cost of Deion Sanders’ five-year, $29.5 million contract that Colorado athletic director Rick George said they didn’t have the money for at the time of his signing last December.

In April, the Buffaloes sold out of season tickets for the first time since 1996, and after their 3-0 start, tickets for the entire season sold out for the first time. 

Single-game ticket revenue is up threefold this season, thanks partly to Colorado’s strategic dynamic pricing techniques since 2016. But, the athletic department carefully kept things in perspective while capitalizing on the demand. 

“We made decisions to stop at some points,” Colorado senior associate athletic director for external operations Alexis Williams told FOS. “We didn’t want to totally out-price, for instance, what fans were paying for tickets on the secondary market.” So far, get-in prices for several of Colorado’s games have reached hundreds of dollars.

Bigger Is Better

Colorado created a rooftop lounge area this season to add more ticket options at the 53,000-seat Folsom Field. The space has limited field views but still drew strong interest from fans looking to be in the building for a game.

Colorado sold close to 20,000 season tickets and plans to add to that number for 2024 when the Buffs join the Big 12. Those will likely go on sale before this season ends to capitalize on the current momentum.