MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Increased premium seating at Milan Puskar Stadium and Hope Coliseum have long been goals of West Virginia Vice President/Director of Athletics Wren Baker.
Both venues will be adding high-dollar offerings in the not-too-distant future, and Baker provided updates Tuesday during an annual spring media session inside the Milan Puskar Team Center.
At Milan Puskar Stadium, the West Tower Project, of which construction is to begin on after the 2026 football season, will add premium seating across three levels — a Club Level, Suite Level and Founder’s Level.
The Club Level is to include loge, ledge and club-style seating, while the Suite and Founders level are to have varying suites, with the Founders Level reserved for prime seating for the top level of giving.
“We’re quietly doing the fundraising for that, but it’s gone extremely well,” Baker said, “and I anticipate there will be updates there over the course of the summer heading into the fall.”
Baker noted WVU has received several substantial monetary gifts this fiscal year before adding, “this by far and away is going to be our best fundraising year ever, so we’re very thankful and very excited about that.”
West Virginia football presently has the fourth fewest premium ticket opportunities among Big 12 Conference teams despite having one of the largest stadium capacities, and with 3.9 percent of the capacity offered in premium tickets, the Mountaineers have the second-lowest mark in the league.
The WVU athletic department recently announced a partnership with Barton Malow and March-Westin as construction managers on a project expected to be finalized prior to the 2028 football season.
That timeline suggests the work on what’s estimated to be a $150 million project will take place before, during and after the 2027 season. Thus, Baker and WVU officials are looking into the possibility of what he termed temporary suites in 2027, though that could lead to lasting change.
“We would look at where can we build some temporary suites in the stadium so that people are not displaced totally,” Baker said. “To be completely candid, it allows us to keep the revenue and not go a year without revenue. We’re trying to do that in a way where it’s also a good test run for maybe future additional premium seating. If this goes well and people like it, we may add that as a permanent element later. Exploring a lot of those. Not quite there yet in terms of what that looks like and where we put all those structures, but definitely plan to do some temporary accommodations for some of our best donors and business supporters.”
The renovations are expected to add no less than $5 million annually to the WVU athletic department budget and will also create a new press box to replace one that has not been upgraded since the stadium opened in 1980.
The project is sure to reduce stadium capacity slightly, but Baker doesn’t foresee an increase in ticket prices as a result of being able to offer fewer.
“I know we lose a little bit of capacity, but it’s minimal,” Baker said. “A few hundred, so it’s not really that much of a change capacity wise. When you put chair-back seating in instead of bleachers in a section, that changes it. It’s a little bit to be determined. We’re still looking through that and we have people that help us with the analytics and analysis of that, but I don’t anticipate any major changes. Even when we have adjusted prices, generally, I will always go down on our most affordable tickets.”
An increase in premium seating is also coming to the Mountaineers’ basketball arena and expected to debut for the 2026-27 season.
WVU has secured the necessary $1.5 million in construction funding to add about 150 loge and ledge seats at approximately 16 locations between the upper and lower concourses.
The hope is for an additional $250,000 in revenue to be generated.
“In men’s basketball, we saw a price decrease for the cheaper seats and part of that was when we did the analysis, we were pretty high on the low end and weren’t where we need to be on the upper end relative to peers,” Baker said. “Our best asset, and it goes back to why we continue to do caravans, is the market share. Everybody in this state cares, so we’re very careful and intentional to not do something to deteriorate our market share. That means having tickets that Joe Blow can afford, so we really try to keep that affordability there. Not for the best seats and the premium. We can’t do that and compete. But that get-in point, we try to keep as affordable as we can.”