Beloved college football team raising $4bn to fund major overhaul of iconic stadium

Michigan State University are about to get some huge upgrades.

Spartans athletic director Jason “J” Batt has revealed that the program is in the planning phases of upgrading the iconic Spartan Stadium, with a projected completion date of 2029.

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“I think the takeaway is that the current state of college athletics is unsustainable,” Batt said during a Detroit Economic Club meeting on Friday.

“I think that’s a hard thing to say but the reality is we’re in a period of constant change. College athletics has changed more fundamentally in the last five years than it’s changed in the last 50 and that runs the gamut.”

The expectation is that MSU’s college football team will still be able to continue playing at the 75,000-seater stadium as construction gets underway.

When it will begin, though, is uncertain, with Batt also revealing that they “still have a lot of dollars to raise” with an estimated cost of $500 million to renovate the stadium which was originally built in 1923.

The funding for Spartans Stadium is expected to come from President Kevin Guskiewicz’s “Uncommon Will, Far Better World” capital campaign, which has the goal of raising $4 billion.

“This is what we needed,” president Guskiewicz said on Friday. “The governance part is important with this and I’m just glad where we are today. We’re going to move forward and be bold and continue to take some risks. …

“It’s about how do you get people back to campus as often as possible. It’s not just about hockey, basketball and football. It’s about creating a district there that creates the athletics opportunities with the rest of campus.”

As of May, MSU is reportedly nearing the halfway mark, having raised an estimated $1.9 billion so far, with Batt having spent a large majority of his one year in his role as AD to find new streams of revenue with the launch of the Spartan Ventures nonprofit set to launch in July.

“What we’ve done is we’ve gone ahead and spun out several areas of our athletic department to optimize revenue generation,” Batt added.

“We are shifting a paradigm through innovation to take ground through change and I think it’s really important and we’re really fortunate to be at a place that allows us to do that.”

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Keeping up with the times

One of the main goals of the renovations to Spartan Stadium is to increase premium seating, as well as really “investing in the game-day experience,” such as making upgrades to the stadium’s sound system.

“There’s lot of ideas,” Batt said. “I think you’ve seen some of the renderings that have been out. There are a lot of priorities. I think Spartan Stadium is an incredible game-day experience, we just need to evolve it and update it.”

Back in December it was announced that the renovation’s initial phase would target the east side of the stadium, where constructing a corporate sponsorship area and a new welcome center would get underway.

Having served as MSU football’s home for over 100 years, and in light of Big 10 rivals Northwestern’s $870m new stadium, the Spartans are desperately trying to keep up with the times.

Furthermore, college football could be set to enter a new era, with talks that the current 12-team format College Football Playoff, that is entering its third season, could be expanded once again to 16 or even 24 schools.

“I would say on the expansion of the [College Football Playoff], I’m fully supportive of going to 24 [teams],” Batt said.

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“That’s an important evolution that provides more access, particularly access to the best leagues and those that have the best opportunities.”

Similarly, there have been reports that the Big Ten conference could also expand beyond 18 schools.

In light of these rumors, Guskiewicz added, “In the Big Ten, since we brought in four schools … from the West Coast, we have had very few if any conversations as a group of 18 presidents and chancellors on that council.

“I think it’s probably halted for a while. We have to see how the House settlement is going to play out, we haven’t even finished the first year of that, that was July 1 of this past year [with] the revenue share.

“I think that we’re committed to see how that plays out and what it means to each of our individual schools in terms of their expenses at the end of every year and the conference in what that looks like.

“It could change in the next 2-3 years, probably closer to 3-4 [years] as we’re renegotiating the next media contract. But I think it’s halted for now.”

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