To Northwestern University donor Pat Ryan Jr., older college football stadiums are like vintage cars. They elicit nostalgia and they’re fun to look at. They’re even occasionally fun to sit in. But they’re no longer practical for the modern age.
“They’re no different from driving a Model T right now,” Ryan said in an interview. “So if you’re going to build [a stadium] every 100 years, you have to get it right, and you have to get it right in a way that’s looking forward toward the world you’re moving into.”
That’s been the lodestar for Northwestern and the Ryan Family, the Big Ten school’s most prolific donors, as they spent the last few years planning for a new football stadium. The old Ryan Field, built in 1926, was demolished earlier this year. The school plans to begin construction this week on a 35,000 venue, scheduled to open in 2026.
The $850 million project, formally unveiled Monday, will be majority financed by the Ryans. Northwestern is contributing an undisclosed sum—“well below half,” per Ryan—that’s equal to what it would have spent on a smaller renovation of the old venue. The Ryans, who own a minority stake in the Chicago Bears and have backed roughly two dozen projects across Northwestern’s Evanston campus, will fund the rest, lead the design and be responsible for all overruns. Northwestern will wholly-own the venue, with no revenue from its operations flowing back to the Ryans. The arrangement is part real estate development, part philanthropy.
The “world you’re moving into,” according to Ryan, is one where every game is available on any screen, and fans need an extra push to attend games in person. The new Ryan Stadium, therefore, has fewer seats than almost any major college venue, and a lot more space dedicated to things beyond the game. That includes more than 200,000 square feet of parks and plazas surrounding the stadium. It has “better than TV” sightlines, Ryan said, and will not rely solely on Northwestern football for revenue. The school is planning to host concerts, corporate meetings, NCAA championship events, high school games, plus other Wildcats competitions such as women’s lacrosse.
For the university, the new building comes at a critical time in college sports, with conference realignment handing even more power to leagues like the Big Ten and athletes commanding a larger share of the billions that they help generate. The school reported an athletics budget of $117.6 million in fiscal 2023, the second lowest in the Big Ten behind Purdue. New facilities help in recruiting—and providing a high-end experience is good business for students and donors—but the biggest impact may be financial.
“Right now, when you think about priorities in an athletic department, to fund a $20+ million payroll, which is likely to happen if [the House vs. NCAA lawsuit] settles, that’s a huge priority,” Northwestern athletic director Mark Jackson said in an interview. “We’re well positioned for the future, and now we’ll have this, with the opportunities it provides in recruiting, revenue generation and creating a home-field advantage.”
Jackson didn’t provide revenue estimates for the new building, but emphasized how hard it was to monetize the old Ryan Field. Built in 1926, the 47,000-seat venue had one skybox hospitality area, with about 350 seats. When the team moved to a temporary, 12,000-seat venue earlier this year, it was able to create a few more pop-up premium areas.
Jackson said the athletic department made more in revenue from games at the temporary venue than it did at the old stadium, despite it being one-fourth the size. That’s almost entirely based on those hospitality sections, and the new stadium will feature four different tiers of premium with more than 3,000 seats.
“So my eyes were open,” said Jackson, who was hired in in August. “I’m more confident than ever that we’re going to be able to go after our sales strategy in a really robust way.”
That awareness of where money comes from in a stadium was crucial in the planning of the new Ryan Field. To illustrate how they’re thinking about the venue, Ryan referenced a stat about United Airlines—that 8% of its passengers generate 56% of its profits. (Sportico could not independently verify its accuracy).
“Our new stadium will be 10% premium prices, and that will generate—not quite as much as United’s—but 40-50% of revenue,” he said. “That allows us to do things that we couldn’t do in the old stadium. To give you an example, a seat in the end zone in our old stadium was $50. Well, if you’re a custodian at Evanston High School, you’re not spending $250 to take your family to a college football game … But we can take that 10% and have them generate the revenue that allows us to create a great experience for everybody, and do a subsidized ticket program for the community … In the old stadium we were subsidizing the rich.”
The new Ryan Field will likely be the most expensive college football stadium project ever. The largest Sportico is aware of was Cal’s $474 million renovation of California Memorial Stadium, which included $200 million in seismic retrofitting. San Diego State’s new Snapdragon Stadium cost $310 million, and Texas A&M’s major renovation of Kyle Field cost $450 million.
The path to reaching this point hasn’t been perfectly linear for the school and Ryan family. The discussions originally started about a renovation to the old venue, then evolved into a wider—and much more expensive—vision for a longer-term solution. The plans were disrupted last year when long-time football coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired after a hazing investigation. In an open letter to the school’s president, a group of tenured professors asked that the planning be halted.
The group also had to negotiate with Evanston city leaders, eventually agreeing on a 15-year, $157.5 million package that includes tax revenue, money for workforce development, local grants and other incentives. The school’s piece of the funding for the stadium, Ryan said, includes a commitment to raise $100 million by selling naming and sponsorship opportunities around the project, including the village and plazas.
The co-CEO of Ryan Sports Development, Ryan declined to say how much his family has given to the university—“a lot,” is all he offered—but it’s more than any other family and the impact is substantial. His father, Patrick G. Ryan, graduated from Northwestern in 1959 and made his fortune in insurance. He’s now worth $13.2 billion, according to Forbes. Both Patrick Ryan Jr. and his brother Rob received MBAs from Northwestern and JDAs from its School of Law.
Next to the new Ryan Field will be Welsh-Ryan Arena, home to the Wildcats basketball, volleyball and wrestling teams. The football team practices in Ryan Fieldhouse. Northwestern students might take classes or work in the Ryan Family Nanotechnology Hall, the Patrick G. And Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Musical Arts, the Ryan Family Center for Global Primary Care, or the Ryan Institute on Complexity.
“My dad believes that everything great in his life had some relationship to Northwestern,” Ryan said. “And we’ve made philanthropic investments where the return to us is seeing something great happen in the world through Northwestern. It’s not all of our philanthropy, but it’s a significant part of it.”
