Keynote: Yormark is disrupting the status quo of college sports

Selling personal seating licenses for the Big 12 Conference football championship, introducing dynamic pricing for concessions and hosting a Big 12 music festival are three other novel ideas Commissioner Brett Yormark is pursuing for the league to generate additional revenue and improve business models to redesign the university level.

On Tuesday, Yormark, keynote speaker at the VenuesNow conference, sat down with Chris Granger, president of Oak View Group, to talk about his role in upending the status quo in college sports and what lies ahead.

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

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Yormark mentioned the concerts, the first at 53,855-seat Boone Pickens Stadium since renovations in 2009, as an example of how schools need to increase their revenue outside of college football, be it NIL or the new revenue-sharing model that is part of it Settlement of $2.78 billion in class action lawsuit over unpaid student-athlete fees.

“One of the things I’ve been advocating for with our schools is to think differently about revenue outside of game days,” Yormark said. “They need to focus on these revenue growth opportunities because (this money) will go directly to their athletic departments and fund NIL, especially when thinking about future revenue sharing.”

Additionally, Yormark would like to see Big 12 athletic departments operate their athletic facilities more sophisticatedly and take aggressive action to dynamically price food and beverages for all events. He did this 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 talk to them,” Yormark said. “It’s important to the future of these athletic departments to bring this professional model to campus and get them to think differently about revenue generation.”

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

Known as an All-Access Pass, fans pay a fee for the right to purchase the same seats for the basketball tournament through 2031.

There are two programs. Premium membership, tied to lower-level courtside, floor and sideline seating, provides access to premium clubs with all-inclusive food and drink. Priority membership includes lower level seating with discounted tickets. There are waiting lists for both programs, as noted on the Big 12 Sports website.

“We’re looking at all options to push some boundaries and move things forward,” Yormark said. “At the same time, we want to equip our schools and advocate for them to do the same. This fall you can see company logos on the football field. At some point there will be a commercial patch on game day uniforms.”

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

Towards the end of the session, Yormark mentioned the creation of a new music festival related to the Big 12 brand. He doesn’t have any details yet, but the festival would be an extension of using music to tell the story of the conference, such as Nelly’s Halftime show during the 2023 conference championship game at AT&T Stadium.

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

“What I did at NASCAR, Roc Nation and the Brooklyn Nets translated to this field and in many ways prepared me for it,” Yormark said. “The settlement will give us a roadmap to enforce things we have not been able to achieve before; good zero vs. bad zero. The fundamental way we work will change. There will be a salary cap, not unlike in the major leagues. As an industry, we will continue to grow and (college football) Saturdays will be bigger than (NFL) Sundays. I’m not here to survive, but to thrive and build our brand.”