Where South Carolina stands with 2025 football season ticket sales
In a shocker, South Carolina fans want to keep watching LaNorris Sellers in person.
OK, not all of USC’s 2025 season-ticket sales are based upon the return of Sellers — the Gamecocks’ star quarterback — or the fact that South Carolina is coming off a 9-4 season — which included a win over Clemson — but it doesn’t hurt.
According to Gamecock Club CEO Wayne Hiott, South Carolina’s season-ticket renewal rate is 96.6% and the expectation is that the Gamecocks will sell the most season tickets since COVID began.
“Our selection process (for season tickets) was as competitive as I’ve ever seen it,” Hiott said. “It took a Diamond Spur, which is the second-highest level in the Gamecock Club — so $35,000 a year just to buy the tickets. It took a Diamond Spur to get premium seats. That’s outrageous.”
That type of demand for premium seating is among the reasons the Williams-Brice renovation is so important, especially considering that South Carolina’s 18 suites are the fewest in the SEC and among the fewest in the Power-4.
But even those who aren’t looking for premium seating are still gobbling up season tickets. As of last week, the Gamecocks had sold 45,100 season tickets — up more than 2,300 from their 2024 total.
“We expect to be at around 47,500 (season tickets) when it’s all said and done,” Hiott said. “(That would be about) 7,500 higher than where we were in 2021.”
If South Carolina were to sell 47,500 season tickets, it would be the most since 2017. Now it is a decline from the all-time high — 54,005 season tickets sold in 2014 — but that was a decade ago, pre-pandemic, when consumer behavior was different, with more folks looking just to buy single-game tickets, Hiott said.
And after 2014, season ticket sales dropped every year after … until Beamer arrived in Columbia in 2021.
The Gamecocks, too, are not trying to gouge fans with exorbitant price increases. They’ve made it clear that the ticket prices will go up, but articulated that it would be about a 4% rise across the board from 2024 to 2025 — regardless of whether the team stunk or, well, there was a Heisman candidate coming back.
“It was a commitment not to jack rates up in giant numbers, like maybe Tennessee has done,” Hiott said. “They call it a talent tax. (Ours) is just a consistent plan that is communicated regularly and way in advance.”
Per the Gamecock Club website, the cheapest season-ticket plans start at $440 ($62.85 per game).
