Coastal Carolina is offering...free concessions?

Is this a marketing ploy or a serious way to generate revenue?

A sold-out crowd at Coastal Carolina’s Brooks Stadium, home of the Chanticleer football program. Credit: Coastal Carolina Athletics, Wikimedia Commons

In a world where programs are scrambling to find new and different revenue streams in the face of the pending House v. NCAA settlement, Coastal Carolina is shaking things up. For each and every home game in the 2025 season at Brooks Stadium, fans will be treated to completely free* concessions.

Say what?

That’s right. It may sound like an April Fools joke - especially considering the March 31 news release - but this is legitimate. Concessions will be free for Chanticleer fans each home football game.

"Our fans are the heartbeat of Teal Nation, and we're always looking for ways to elevate their game day experience," said Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics and University Recreation Chance Miller. "With the CCU Kickoff Meal Deal, we're excited to offer free concessions this fall as a way to say thank you for the energy, passion and support they bring to Brooks Stadium every game."

How will free concessions work?

Surprisingly easily.

According to Coastal’s press release, any fans that purchase a ticket will be able to access the free items. Each time they visit the concession stand, they are eligible for four free items, including “a selection of hot dogs, nachos, popcorn and fountain drinks.” Even better, there are no limits to the number of times you can visit a concession stand and claim your free items.

To facilitate this, fans will have to scan a code on the yet-to-be-launched Coastal Carolina Athletics App that will discount the food down to zero.

Now, you probably noticed the nice little asterisk I put in the lede of this story. That’s right, not all concessions are completely free. Specialty items, outside vendor items and alcohol will still have to be purchased. With Coastal’s concessions offerings through Aramark still to be finalized, we don’t yet know how much of the menu will be available to fans in this CCU Kickoff Meal Deal.

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How does giving away food help Coastal?

You’d be surprised how much schools make off of concessions. While Coastal Carolina hasn’t released their specific concession-related revenue numbers from last season, many similarly-sized and attended programs reported roughly $250,000 of concession-related revenue per game. That amounts to about $1.5 million from concessions if we assume programs will have the usual six home games.

There is precedent for slashing concession prices leading to more revenue. The NFL’s Atlanta Falcons were the pioneers of the low-cost concessions craze upon the opening of Mercedes Benz Stadium in 2017, where prices dropped nearly 50 percent when compared to the team’s pricing in their previous home.

For the Falcons, that drop in costs actually led to a growth in revenue. According to Front Office Sports, the Falcons saw total concession transactions rise 30 percent. Merchandise sales also were up 20 percent alongside the average number of items per transaction. People love a good deal, and getting a good deal oftentimes leads to more spending.

But that’s with heavily slashed concessions that still have potential for profit margins. What about giving away concessions like Coastal will be doing? Well, you’d expect other amounts to grow. Namely, ticket sales. In FY2024, Coastal reported a $1,180,140 revenue in ticket sales. Coastal’s season ticket package is currently available at $150 for the whole season. That would break out to about $25 per game. Not a bad price.

Let’s assume that there’s about $10 additional charged in single-game tickets, which is common. Would you pay $35 plus parking (let’s guess $20 to be on the high side) for a football game if you knew you could smash as many hot dogs and soft drinks as you’d like? Especially for games played in Conway, South Carolina just next to Myrtle Beach?

I bet you would. It may even sway you into going multiple times. Guess what? Coastal just got a new customer. And they can rinse and repeat that as many times as they’d like - especially as the weather grows colder and people will be in the tourist destination of Myrtle Beach and might want to catch a cheap game.

But does that translate to actual revenue for the Chanticleers? That’s going to be tough.

Using our earlier numbers, $1.5 million is the total concession revenue for the season. With high-ticket items like alcoholic beverages and premium foods (outside vendor sales don’t generally count in this total), there will still be a sizeable income from concessions. An article published in The Sport Journal - ironically with the first author being a Coastal Carolina professor - estimates that 55 percent of college concession revenue comes from alcohol sales. That means the school will maintain $825,000 of that $1.5 million through alcohol sales alone.

Like discussed earlier, ticket sales will certainly go up with the all-inclusive concessions, but can ticket sales make up for the lost revenue? Some of that will come from the premium foods and merchandise sale increases that we saw with the Falcons, but I think that, with all told, Coastal will come out in the green on this. It’s just hard to forecast without any hard data from the school on their exact numbers.

Will this catch on?

I’ll make this simple: no. But it’s fun.

Coastal Carolina already has a tradition of trying wild, wonky marketing techniques to try to bring people to games. They play on the Surf Turf for crying out loud!

The Fans Feast Free promotion is just the latest in a line of massive promotions geared to increase ticket sales.

We don’t have to go too far back, finding an October 24, 2024 release about the “We Win, You Win Money Back Guarantee” to see another example of this. Coastal, in a push to increase men’s and women’s basketball season ticket sales, offered fans a guarantee of a full refund of their basketball season tickets if the team wins a total of 35 combined regular season games. They did note that the required donations that come with a season ticket purchase and parking would not be refunded, but still. That’s a massive promotion.

Unfortunately for fans, Refund Watch came up just short with a combined 33 regular season wins between the two programs. However, it did work for the Chants. The men’s team, despite going 10-22, averaged 1,665 attendees, up from 1,378 in 2023-24. On the women’s side, the Chanticleers were much better at 23-9 and 12-6 in Sun Belt play. They averaged 779 attendees each home contest, compared to 593 a season ago. At the end of the day, that’s a 17 percent increase in men’s attendance and a 24 percent increase in women’s attendance. Pretty solid metrics.

So why won’t more teams jump on these crazy promotional bandwagons? Well, there’s a lot of risk in there. If the hooping Chanticleers would’ve managed just two more wins, all those season tickets would’ve been refunded. In a world where you’re trying to raise revenue, refunding the entirety of your season ticket sales would be a nightmare scenario.

These risks aren’t bad things, though. I applaud Miller for thinking entirely outside the box and searching for unique ways to generate revenue for his department. More schools - especially in the Group of Five - should adopt this way of thinking. Especially if they’re opting into the House settlement and are preparing for revenue sharing en masse.

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