How Georgia Tech hustles to meet college athletics’ rising costs

In its 114th season of football, Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium is getting squeezed for revenue perhaps like never before.

Yellow Jackets fans will find 40% more concessions points of sale than last year, the better to keep lines short and encourage more frequent trips for hot dogs and drinks. Thanks to upgraded and additional technology, fans will be able to pass through metal-detection scanners more quickly.

It will serve to a) improve game-day experience and encourage attendance at more games, and b) usher fans more efficiently inside the stadium so they can start spending their discretionary dollars.

The cafeteria in the new Fanning Center that overlooks the field from the northeast corner of the stadium will be repurposed on game days into a premium space called the Wreck Deck. An area beneath the west stands that was previously used for merchandise sales and a photographers’ workroom has been transformed into another premium club area (West Festival Club).

This is how an athletic department without the biggest fan base, stadium or conference TV deal stays in the game.

“I say in our meetings all the time, ‘Everybody’s a ticket-seller. Everybody’s a revenue-generator,’” Tech athletic director Ryan Alpert told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a recent interview. “’There’s no bad idea.’”

In Alpert’s first year at Tech, that approach helped Tech capture a record $175 million in revenue for the 2026 fiscal year, a 12% increase from the previous record, set in the previous fiscal year. That included a single-year record for fundraising ($110 million, surpassing the previous mark by 36%), and a 67% increase in concessions revenue from the previous year.

Having the football team complete a thrilling and historic season helps immeasurably. But executing measures that financially capitalize on it also adds to the cash register.

“I stated when I first got here — and still believe it today — that the revenue generation and the tying of success and competitive success to revenue and available funds of revenue is more closely aligned today than it ever has been in college sports,” said Alpert, hired in July 2025 from Tennessee, where he was senior deputy AD and chief revenue officer.

The importance of revenue generation is only growing. There is little reason to think, particularly with the possible passage of the Protect College Sports Act, that college athletics expenses are going to do anything but climb.

It makes the expertise and creativity of revenue-minded administrators like Alpert and executive deputy AD Brent Jones all the more critical.

“I always tell our staff, there’s not one significant windfall that’s going to help you grow $20 million in the budget,” Alpert said. “You’re going to have to get $1 million here, $2 million there, $3 million here and all of that incrementally adds up.”

Alpert has turned to peers with the Braves, Falcons, Hawks and Mercedes-Benz Stadium for ideas on topics ranging from ticket-sales strategy to concerts to the usage of AI to sponsorships.

“They’re five to six years ahead of us at all times,” Alpert said of his pro-sports colleagues. “So the more we can learn from them and become more diverse in that space, (the better).”

One lesson is that sponsorship doesn’t have to be a sign in the stadium. He noted, for instance, that highlight videos created for social media could have a sponsor’s mark on them.

“There’s a lot of things that we’re already doing that we could monetize with a sponsor that we just weren’t just putting into packages before,” he said.

Alpert credited the concessions strategy to Braves president and CEO Derek Schiller, who was actually just returning the idea to its source. The Braves’ plan was supported by a project performed by Tech’s school of industrial and systems engineering.

“Our student group built a study for them on how they positioned gate entry, how they positioned their concession stands, the things that they were doing to make a better flow for the fan,” Alpert said. “Which, in turn, you’re going to get better (spending per customer).”

An upcoming revenue stream is jerseys, now that NCAA rules permit commercial patches.

While most departments are signing patch deals with a single corporate partner for all of the schools’ teams, Alpert said Tech may go in a different direction that could eke out a few more coins.

“We’re actually looking at potentially breaking up the assets,” Alpert said. “Particularly because some companies, they’re led by a CEO or a board that have an affiliation or an affinity of one team or one sport. So we’re looking at that.”

As for football, Alpert said that “we’re in a really good place to potentially get one in” for the upcoming season.

The budget for the 2027 fiscal year (which began July 1) is targeted to be around $180 million, slightly greater than last year. To match expenses, Tech will have to overcome not being able to hold concerts in the stadium — it held three this past academic year that brought in millions in revenue — because of an impending $70 million stadium renovation.