The first time I rode in an airplane was in 2001, about three months before 9/11. As part of a scholarship program, I flew the summer before my senior year of high school to Baltimore. I knew little of the city’s problems, so to me this was just home of the Orioles and Ravens and the Ravens had just played in the Super Bowl. That was a big deal to a young future sportswriter.
The trip was the first time I had encountered beggars on the street without my parents. A group of us high schoolers were in Inner Harbor and were confronted. No one gave anything except me, a rising high school senior with a part-time job as a pizza-delivery driver. One of my fellow travelers remarked about how stupid it was for me to hand over money. The classmate remarked that the person I gave it to would use it poorly. I didn’t care. Still don’t. I still give when I have physical currency, which, in 2025, isn’t often.
Now, instead of ne’er-do-wells or simply people down on their luck asking, it’s mega corporations and, yes, your favorite college athletics department. You’ll have to pardon me if I’d rather hand over my cold, hard cash from this oh-so-lucrative journalism career to people who need it to survive instead of a supposedly amateur sports program that needs it to justify its mediocrity.
Money, apparently, equals loyalty in an era of so-called rising costs.
Arkansas Wants Your Money More Than Ever
Yet, we are all being asked to do exactly that here in the Natural State. The flagship university and our local Southeastern Conference Arkansas Razorbacks are essentially asking for handouts as the Razorback Foundation, Arkansas athletics’ fundraising arm, stated that it would increase the required donation level of the highest tier of donor perks. The cost for the new Broyles-Matthews Diamond level is a cool $40,000 a year.
If you’ve sat in the same spot since the arena opened in 1993, even suffering through the Stan Heath and John Pelphrey eras, you are now at risk of losing those seats — unless your annual donation is bumped up to that $40,000 level.
Yes, the UA will “recognize the loyalty of current season ticket holders” by allowing them to purchase the same number of tickets in 2025-26, but only “as long as they meet the current membership level requirement for that quantity,” according to an email sent out by the UA on Wednesday.
This new pricing system going to hit a lot of families’ wallets hard.
Consider that, under the previous pricing structure, you could get 4 tickets with a $100 donation, as you can see here:

But here’s the new system from the UA email:

As you can see, the minimum to buy four tickets now goes up to $3,000.
When it comes to buying 5 or 6 tickets, the diehard Arkansas basketball fan used to be able to make a $1,000 donation. Now it’s a $10,000 minimum.
Keep in mind: the median income for an Arkansas household $59,000ish a year. You’d better believe Joe Bob and Janet’s salaries are not rising at anything close to this rate. They can watch on ESPN’s upcoming flagship network for $25 a month, instead. While eating cake.
Bud Walton Arena hasn’t had a reseating like this in the more than three decades of its existence. Ryan White, the executive director of the Razorback Foundation, told Whole Hog Sports’ Matt Jones he expects this reshuffling to add about $4-$6 million to its annual fund.
Of course, the UA is delivering this under the guise of equitability. Didn’t the new president discourage such devices? Or is that only when diversity and inclusion are attached? I suppose the new plan is more equitable in the sense that the hording of tickets by the mega-rich is more difficult, thereby providing access to more tickets to more people. Top donors can’t automatically select all the best seats under the new plan. It’s equitable if you reach a certain income threshold, I suppose, seeing as those who donate more will still get first dibs.
“We understand there is a price to pay in order to play in the SEC,” White said. “While the donation might be significant to some people, our season ticket price is fairly reasonable.”
Uh huh. Some people. Fairly reasonable.
That is the American way, though. Even athletic director Hunter Yurachek admitted as such during his Thursday morning interview on the Chuck & Bo Show.
“I look at it this way…if you personally are going to sell your home, you’re going to sell your car (or) you’re going to sell some type of product and you have 5-10 people bidding on that product, nine out of 10 people are going to take the highest bid, right?” Yurachek said. “You’re not going to sell your house to the lowest bidder.”
What Does Your Money Buy, Really, Anyway?
The worst part of this is Arkansas’ continual god-awful timing.
It’s one thing to ask fans to pay higher prices when they see a return on their proverbial investment. A return, that is, greater than a lapel pin to show-off your Diamond level status. It’s a whole ‘nother thing when the fans see almost nothing in return. Audacious, indeed, for the school and athletic director Hunter Yurachek to ask regular Arkansans to just reach deeper into their pockets to support their team when the only two sports the masses care about are mediocre (football) and flailing (basketball). The Hogs are 1-6 in league play and the lone victory came at home by a grand total of three points. Things are dire.
And yet it’s some of the same fans who have been through thick and thin with the Razorbacks through these last three decades who may potentially get squeezed out of their current seats – if not during this cycle, then the next time Arkansas comes off a good season. “It hurts to see all the dedicated fans who showed up rain or shine being treated like this,” says Stephen Glass, an Arkansas basketball season ticket holder since ’93.
It’s clear that the UA is going to have to pay a price for this move too, in the form of the goodwill of some of its most frustrated loyal fans. That’s one of the most valuable commodities any athletic department has, even if there’s no way to attach any KPIs to it.
On the surface, this Bud Walton reshuffling is about hitting up the The Blessings crowd, the Pinnacle Hills crowd, the Chenal Promenade folks. They can afford it. And corporate donations have always been at the root of sports. Still, those aren’t the folks buying the ESPN subscriptions en masse. They aren’t decking out their kid in Hogs gear despite never having attended the school. That’s Joe Bob. That’s Janet. They’re the ones hootin’ and hollerin’ and creating the atmosphere that makes Fayetteville an occasionally difficult place to play.
The downstream effect of all this is fewer Janets and Joe Bobs.
We understand this isn’t just an Arkansas issue. The NIL game has transformed collegiate athletics into something of a behemoth, having grown so fast and so large, without guardrails, schools are racing to cover costs. And that was before revenue sharing (costing $21.5 million) and up to 100 more scholarships across the athletic department (costing $3.5 million) kick in this summer, which means the UA will soon be on the hook for $25 million more than it is now. Like any good capitalistic enterprise, that cost isn’t going to be soaked up by the producer. It’s handed to the consumer.
Only in baseball have the Razorbacks seen a consistently high ROI in recent years.
Yes, even on the diamond, the school faced some blowback when it instituted a similar, pre-NIL, measure back in 2021. The ensuing spring, Arkansas made the College World Series, finishing in third place and the ill-will largely died down, though it does still surface sometimes during the rare Diamond Hogs’ cold streaks. It returns with a force when the team fails to reach a threshold those fans seem to require. Just this past offseason, as a matter of fact, some were calling for Van Horn’s head, even though the Hogs made and hosted yet another Regional.
With the increase in price and cost comes an increase in expectations. Sure, it isn’t fair. Arkansas football – as has been said a kajillion times here – isn’t ever going to be a powerhouse given the structure of the sport. Arkansas basketball *could* be. And it’s certainly relevant right now, unfortunately for Razorbacks fans, for all the wrong reasons. But sustained high-level success, neither has had in more than 30 years. The late-80s this ain’t when it comes to results and the late-80s this ain’t when it comes to the way the game works (though Yuppie Greed of the ‘80s is definitely a thing again, so maybe Arkansas has a shot after all).
Other SEC Schools Make It Work
And many would accept the increased cost, albeit not to the tune of $40k, if their teams were winning. Consider Arkansas’ legitimately biggest rival Missouri. Athletic director Laird Veatch (obviously a man of the people with a name like that; he sounds like a vicar or a duke or something) announced the Tigers would be changing their donation policy in November. Essentially, it goes from “You donate, you get a parking spot and a ticket” to “The more you donate, the better parking and better ticket you get.” To get the maximum benefit in Missouri’s new package requires a $50,000 donation.
“(The previous) policy allowed our fans to make one donation and have access to tickets and parking in both men’s basketball and in football, and that’s just an outdated policy that none of our peers in the (Southeastern Conference) function under,” Veatch said. “So, we’re going to need to break up that policy and, through that, it will make way for our donors to not only know specifically what they’re buying and paying for, but it will also allow us the opportunity for us to increase prices, particularly in football, so that we can generate the revenues necessary to compete at the highest level.”
Tough luck, teachers and waiters and mechanics and all you working class, folks. You can still get tickets. In the nosebleeds.
Still, you won’t find Mizzou fans getting up in arms as much about this. Missouri wins in its two primary sports. Arkansas has beaten its border-state rival twice in the last 11 years in football. And while Mizzou basketball has largely been the equivalent of Arkansas football over the same time period, the Tigers are sure enough winning again right now. And although winning doesn’t cure ills, it makes people ignore them.
At Tennessee, the Volunteers took a different approach. They spread the increase in ticket cost equally, introducing a 10% fee across the board. Such an approach doesn’t as quickly price-out those who had previously held seats that may have been grandfathered in under, as Veatch called it, an outdated policy.
Arkansas is just attempting to keep up with the Joneses, attempting to justify its Little-Man Complex as the one of the lowliest public-school members of the SEC. They have to have money to make it work.
No, money to make it work isn’t the problem.
The problem is, ultimately, they’re asking you to be me. Give ‘em some dough. They promise they won’t spend it on booze.
Or wins, apparently.
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More here:
Arkansas’ athletic director chimes in here:
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