Tennessee AD announces ambitious 5-year plan to increase athletic department revenue

The Tennessee Volunteers athletics department released a five-year plan on Thursday, titled “Rise Glorious,” which outlines athletic director Danny White’s ambitious goals for revenue, ticket sales and results.

“You build a brand from the inside out, and this an internal document that we decided for ourselves,” White said. “The level of accountability this places on our organization is enhanced. We’re not hiding behind it. We’re not shying away from it. We want to be highly, highly competitive.”

The former UCF AD has been on the job in Knoxville for 18 months and clearly has plans to stick around. The five-year plan includes general objectives for academic success, inclusivity, health and wellness, professional development and campus culture, but it’s the revenue or overall success goals that have defined parameters.

White wants to increase the department’s operating budget from $170 million in 2022-23 to $200 million by 2026-27. Tennessee also intends to double its unrestricted annual fund, which averaged $22.7 million annually from 2012 to 2021. The plan to achieve the goals includes premium seating offerings, tickets and parking.

Danny White: ‘The revenue is our engine’

The Volunteers’ revenue goals are lofty but necessary to achieve the type of success they’re looking for, as White explains.

“They are (connected). It would be like worrying how fast the car is without being concerned about how big the engine is,” White said. “The revenue is our engine. For us to be consistently competitive as we want to be, we’d better have the might behind it. And that’s the operating budget and facilities.”

Also in the plan is an increase in corporate sponsorship from $18 million to $23 million over the next five years. White also wants donations to the year-old Shareholders Society to go up from $25 million to $33 million by 2026-27.

Hoping to fill more seats in Neyland Stadium, the plan notes a goal of 56,000 season tickets sold in 2022 and an increase to 70,000 by 2026. The Vols had more than 73,000 season tickets sold during the Butch Jones era, so White believes it’s possible if the results are there.

The “Rise Glorious” plan specifically outlines how the program must perform to reach its goals. They want to win a national championship in at least one sport every four years with each sport notching at least one national top-16 finish every four years.

“We want to get all our programs in a place where we can say they can compete for SEC and national championships,” White said. “Some of them are really positioned well right now. Some of them aren’t as much.

“It’s never going to completely be about facilities or operating budget or who the coach is. It’s going to be about all those things.”