RALEIGH — NC State won’t play a home football game for seven more weeks but the school will host two big music concerts at Carter-Finely Stadium, just one way it hopes to generate additional revenue for its athletics department in an era of soaring costs.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Guns N’ Roses will play the football stadium Thursday, July 23, while popular singer-songwriter Noah Kahan has sold out his show Saturday, July 25.
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“They’re money makers for us,” NC State athletics director Boo Corrigan told WRAL. “I think it’s a great thing we can do for Raleigh to be able to do that. The students that are here, it’s part of the overall college experience, if we can provide that as well.”
Last year’s sold-out Chris Brown concert marked the first major music show at Cater-Finley Stadium since Beyonce in 2016 and The Rolling Stones in 2015. U2 played the stadium in 2009. Other musical greats such as Pink Floyd, The Who, Grateful Dead, Paul McCartney, George Strait and Jimmy Buffett have played at the stadium since 1988.
The Chris Brown concert, held in October, led to massive traffic problems in and around the stadium — problems that university and Raleigh police say they’re working to prevent this weekend.
“We worked with the police department to make sure that we’re as prepared as we can be, to make sure that it’s a big event for the city and for NC State and for the residents,” Corrigan said.
NC State made $500,000 off last year’s concert, and Corrigan said the school is interested in holding more events at Carter-Finley Stadium, which has a capacity of 56,919 for football games. Most of those seats are available for musical performances.
“We’re open for business,” said Corrigan, adding that Raleigh is becoming a more popular stop for touring acts.
NC State projected an athletics department deficit of more than $18 million off a budget of $144.6 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, which was the first year of direct revenue sharing with athletes. North Carolina reported a $14-million deficit in its athletics department in 2024-25. Schools could share up to $20.5 million with athletes during the 2025-26 school year. That figure rises to $21.3 million for the 2026-27 school year, leaving athletic departments in need of additional revenue.
One place to look: A giant football stadium that is packed for seven or so home games each year.
Rival North Carolina hosted the Savannah Bananas baseball team for two games at Kenan Stadium earlier this year. Corrigan said he’d like to see Carter-Finley Stadium play host to a multi-day summer concert festival with other events at Lenovo Center and other entertainment venues projected to be part of a development around the sports facilities.
The search for additional dollars
Every little bit helps — and it takes some creativity.
The athletics director position was endowed with a $5 million gift in early 2025 and the school is exploring selling naming rights to display cases at Reynolds Coliseum. The school has raised ticket prices and donation levels for tickets and parking, but Corrigan said he is reluctant to place the entire cost on fans.
“I don’t think there’s this magic bullet,” Corrigan said. “It’d be great if someone wrote us a check for $25 million every year.”
In the budget recently passed by state lawmakers, NC State and North Carolina will receive money from sports gambling tax revenue. Since the launch of legal online sports betting in March 2024, the other 13 UNC System schools with athletic departments have received about $5 million. NC State and UNC, along with App State, Charlotte and East Carolina, can receive up to $3.8 million fiscal year and up to $5.3 million in subsequent years, which WRAL first reported last month.
The university, too, is contributing money – more than $5 million in direct institutional support in 2024-25.
The university is working on selling naming rights to Carter-Finley Stadium. Corrigan said NC State has been “very close a number of times” to completing a deal, but doesn’t expect to have a partner in place before football season. NC State is also having conversations about selling patches on its uniforms.
“It's just the complexity of the deals,” he said. “It’s not simple.”
ACC, too, looking for more revenue
The 16-team Big 12 conference sold jersey patches on its members’ football and basketball uniforms, along with other branding placements, for $20 million to be split among the schools. The Atlantic Coast Conference, home to NC State, North Carolina and Duke, will allow its member schools to sell those themselves. California became the first ACC school to announce a jersey patch deal with artificial intelligence platform Dialpad.
Arkansas, LSU and Memphis are among the schools that have announced jersey patch deals for their entire departments. South Florida and Louisiana-Monroe did deals for football. Wisconsin sold patches for its women’s basketball, softball, women’s hockey and softball programs.
“The data pointed us in the direction that this was an asset best monetized at the local school level,” said Anthony Macri, who was hired as the ACC’s first chief revenue officer in October.
NC State received $46.4 million from the ACC in 2024-25, the latest year for which data is available. That’s up from $31.0 million in 2019-20. The conference’s revenue has soared since the launch of the ACC Network in 2019 from $496.7 million to $826.4 million in 2024-25. Commissioner Jim Phillips said last week that the revenue figure would eclipse $900 million for the 2025-26 year.
The Big Ten and Southeastern Conference both generated more than $1.1 billion in 2024-25 and paid their teams an average of more than $70 million.
So like its schools, the league is seeking additional revenue, including from corporate sponsors. The league has doubled its list of corporate sponsorships to nine in the past five years, according to The Associated Press. At its football kickoff event last week, the ACC announced a deal with ReliaQuest, an AI cybersecurity company. The conference is also focused on maximizing revenue from its 10 neutral-site championship events.
Macri and Marques Zak, the ACC’s first chief marketing and brand officer, visited all 18 member schools last year, meeting with athletic directors, marketing and revenue officers, administrators and some coaches and players to find ways the league can help schools like NC State.
“We want to understand where the conference can plug in to make the most of what they're trying to do locally,” Macri said. “We want to build as much revenue at the conference level as we can, so we can distribute more. But if we can also drive value for them locally, we make the conference an attractive place to be.”
