COLUMBIA, Mo. — Rising increasingly higher over the northern end of Missouri’s Faurot Field are steel beams that aren’t quite a silver bullet.
Work on a new north concourse has progressed steadily in recent months. Excavation that revealed much of the playing surface to cars passing by along Stadium Boulevard has yielded to a metallic skeleton hinting at what’s to come.
The $250 million project won’t be completed until the 2026 football season. At that point, Mizzou leadership hopes it’ll be helpful in stadium atmosphere, football recruiting and revenue generation.
Those first two aspects are fairly simple. A closed-in, nice-looking structure ought to contain some crowd noise and improve the aesthetics of Memorial Stadium. In turn, that ought to help impress high school and transfer visitors who might play for the Tigers.
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The revenue piece — which rests on the thinking that an influx of premium seating and a year-round event space will bring in more money to MU athletics than the previous grassy hill and open concourse plaza did — is more complex.
“The north end zone is going to have a significant impact on our capacity to generate revenues,” Missouri athletics director Laird Veatch said last week. “But in order for that to happen, we’re going to have to continue to receive the kind of response that we need on the philanthropic side.”
When UM System officials approved the renovation in 2024, they did so with the stipulation that half of the project’s cost, so $125 million, would come in via donations.
“Essentially, for us to utilize that north end as an opportunity to truly increase our revenues and help our bottom line, we need more and more of those dollars provided upfront by our key contributors to help unlock that margin, if you will,” Veatch said, adding that MU’s fundraising efforts are “tracking really well.”
Getting the facility up and running, from a revenue standpoint, will be critical for Mizzou as it enters college sports’ revenue-sharing age. Starting with this upcoming sports and fiscal year, there’s at least $21 million more going to athletes — $18 million in shared revenue, $3 million in added scholarships — that the athletics department needs to find.
Like any salary cap, the revenue-sharing limit will rise a bit each year. This isn’t getting cheaper for athletics departments, such as Mizzou, that have recently operated in the red even with support from the campus side of the university.
Premium ticket sales and assorted events taking place in the new north end zone might alleviate some of that burden in the future.
“But that doesn’t hit for a few years either, right?” Veatch said. “That’s something else that has to take time to play out. It’s managing through these immediate fiscal years that we see in front of us.”
In the meantime, Veatch said he’s pleased with how MU fans have responded to the athletics department’s decision to raise prices on football tickets — a decision made in the hopes it could provide an injection of revenue. Renewals on season tickets are around 85%, he said. There’s currently a waiting list for new season tickets.
As he’d promised when he was hired last year and university administrators have asked, Veatch has also targeted the other half of the financial equation: spending.
“We looked at it on an in-depth level on the expense side, not just the venue generation side,” Veatch said. “Certainly, we’re asking more of our people: the ticket prices, how we’re adjusting some of our fundraising, etc. But we’ve looked in areas like travel and dining and equipment, specific elements to what we do. And stepping back, from a staffing standpoint, how do we approach certain areas? Where do we need to apply our resources?
“I would say it was across the board and inclusive — really, everybody’s touched, whether that’s the administrative side or sports. We’re going to have to adjust and make room for this opportunity to provide more of these resources directly to student-athletes.”
It hasn’t been and won’t be the kind of fix found in any one source of money, whether that’s cuts to expenses, higher ticket prices or the new north end zone. As the college sports landscape and Mizzou’s own facilities continue to change from fiscal year to fiscal year, the financial strategy will have to shift too.
“Any athletic director worth their salt is going to say they’re not pleased yet with the revenue where we’re at,” Veatch said. “I do feel like we’ve made significant improvements there, and I feel really good about the decisions we’ve made, how that’s been embraced and the response we’ve received from fans.”
