The Univ. of Wisconsin wants to "raise season ticket prices" for football and volleyball next season with revenues "lagging behind expenses in projections" for the '18-19 budget, according to Todd Milewski of the WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL. Pending approval by the UW board, general public football tickets "would climb $6 per game to $54, or $378 for a seven-home season." That is a 12.5% "increase over prices that have been in place for the past three seasons." Student season tickets for football are "proposed to increase from $24 to $27 per game." And UW is "seeking to raise general public volleyball season tickets in a range of $5 to $35 for the season." The highest price would "grow from $65 last season to $100" in '18. UW Associate AD/Business Operations Mario Morris said that the football increases would generate about $2M in "additional revenue." Morris said that the working '18-19 budget has a deficit of more than $2.9M that "needs to be filled because of salary increases and growth in capital expenditures." Morris: "It’s been three years since we’ve taken a look at ticket prices, and we felt that this was an appropriate request." Early projections showed UW athletics expenses for '18-19 exceeding $145M, a 9.5% increase over the '17-18 budget (WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL, 1/11).
RED TAPE: YAHOO SPORTS' Jay Busbee noted UW's football team, coaches and staff, as well as certain university officials, "stayed at the Trump National Doral for a week" prior to their Orange Bowl matchup against Miami. UW is a state university, and for that reason, the visit "could turn up in a lawsuit" filed by the state of Maryland and DC. That lawsuit charges that President Trump "violated anti-corruption clauses in the Constitution by accepting millions of dollars’ worth of payments from both foreign and domestic government entities" (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 1/10).
