Being a Georgia Bulldogs football season-ticket holder will become more expensive in 2017.
Georgia athletic director Greg McCarity announced Thursday that per-seat donations will increase by 10 to 20 percent next season at Sanford Stadium. McGarity made the announcement before the university's athletic board of directors during its quarterly meeting at Reynolds Plantation in Greensboro, Ga.
Such donations give fans the opportunity to purchase season tickets. McGarity said the increase is the first of its kind since 2005 and that it will generate $2.5 million in new revenue, which will be used for facility enhancements.
"We wanted to be respectable in the increase to not price people out of a certain area," McGarity told the board with media members in attendance, "but we did feel like we needed to make an adjustment. We want to encourage people to come to games, and we've got our work cut out to make sure that happens."
The per-seat donation increases will range from $25 to $250, with a majority being $50. McGarity said the increase would put Georgia in the middle of the Southeastern Conference as far as ticket prices.
Georgia already has sold out all 58,000 season tickets for 2016, which features home games against Nicholls State, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Auburn, Louisiana-Lafayette and Georgia Tech.
McGarity used Thursday's gathering to apologize for the embarrassing contract details involving Ludacris, who was paid $65,000 to perform for 13 minutes before 93,000 fans at Georgia's G-Day spring game April 16. Open records requests revealed the Atlanta-based rap artist received condoms and liquor as part of the performing agreement.
"I want to apologize to our board for mistakes we made with certain aspects of the details of an entertainment agreement," McGarity said. "Few things in my professional life have bothered me more than this situation. There are no reruns in life, so we need to turn the page, learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to make sure events of this nature do not reoccur."
Georgia's athletic board also approved a $123 million budget for the 2017 fiscal year, which is an increase of $5.6 million from the current year. Projects scheduled for the upcoming year include a $4.6 million enhancement to the Jack Turner soccer stadium, a $1.8 million enhancement at Stegeman Coliseum and $1 million to begin designs for a new home locker room that will be located behind Sanford's west end zone.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.