Tyler Childers performs at Kroger Field in Lexington, Ky., during his “On the Road” tour on Saturday, April 19, 2025. By Ryan C. Hermens

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It would have been impossible for anyone involved to have predicted the scene that played out at Kroger Field on April 19.

There was Kentucky native Tyler Childers and his band performing in front of a sold-out crowd in a venue that had almost exclusively been previously used to host Wildcat football games.

For Childers, it was a full-circle moment from the early days of his career when he dreamed of making a career as a musician while a student at Bluegrass Community and Technical College on the other side of the stadium parking lot.

“I did three semesters at BCTC and I hated every minute of it,” he said. “I was like, ‘Man, it’d be really cool to be able to play music and not do this,’ and that would not have happened if it wasn’t for you-all’s support.”

For UK, it was proof of concept for a possible new revenue source in a changing college sports landscape that will see the athletic department distribute $20.5 million directly to athletes this school year.

“That wasn’t an athletic event, right?” UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart said. “It wasn’t our event, but it was. It was big for the community. Everyone had a great time. It was an awesome concert. Beautiful night in Kroger Field.”

Barnhart joked the concert was so successful that Kentucky planned to hold nine more a year in an effort to maximize revenue moving forward.

While Barnhart was quick to make sure reporters understood his comment was in jest, the athletic department is serious about finding ways to use Kroger Field to drive more revenue.

“We can’t use facilities eight or nine times a year,” said Eric Monday, UK’s executive vice president for finance and administration. “We’re going to have to figure out ways to utilize them at a higher level. And we’ve already started down that path with some of what Mitch has done in some of them, but there’s a lot more, I think, that’s in front of us as opportunities to consider.”

Documents obtained by the Herald-Leader through the state’s open records law offer a clearer sign of the financial benefit events like the Childers concert can provide the athletic department.

In a contract signed with entertainment promotion company Live Nation, UK agreed to a 50-50 split in most revenue from the concert. UK collected 100% of the revenue from ticket sales in luxury suites and loge level seating.

UK and Live Nation split revenue from other ticket sales, concessions, parking and merchandise sales. The two split the cost of the $55,000 drone show used during the concert.

UK netted just more than $1.1 million from the show.

That total is not nearly enough to account for the $20.5 million cost of revenue sharing brought on by the NCAA’s House legal settlement alone, but it represents a piece of UK’s strategy to find new revenue sources.

“Most athletic departments have five (revenue) buckets,” Barnhart said. “They have tickets. They have fundraising. They have concessions and souvenirs, contracts — your Nikes and Gatorades and things like that. … Then the last one is your conference revenue sharing from your television (deal). Those are the five buckets that have generally occurred for most schools.

“How can you add three or four more buckets as you go forward? That’s our goal.”

UK has transitioned its athletic department management to a nonprofit LLC called Champions Blue in an effort to find new revenue sources moving forward.

At the first meeting of the Champions Blue Board of Governors on Tuesday, athletic department staffers outlined a three-year budget plan to see the department not only account for the added revenue sharing expense but find enough revenue to operate at a profit after needing an internal university loan to cover a projected deficit over the next two years.

UK projects to begin drawing revenue from a new luxury club in the west end zone at Kroger Field beginning in the 2027 season. It has begun the process of requesting proposals for the design and construction of a fan entertainment district outside the stadium that could include restaurants, hotels and other attractions to generate revenue outside of football season.

Barnhart estimates the department is currently using the stadium around 20 times a year, between home football games, high school state championships and other university events.

 

“To have an opportunity to maybe jump that up to 25 or 30 would be awesome,” Barnhart said Tuesday. “If we could find 25 or 30 nights that we’re doing something in this facility, it’d be really, really helpful to us.”

 

Despite a recent report that a United Football League franchise was considering moving to Kentucky, splitting time between Lexington and Louisville, Barnhart said the department has not had any discussions with the UFL about using Kroger Field. Asked if he would ever consider hosting a men’s basketball game — like the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry — in Kroger Field, Barnhart laughed before acknowledging the logistics of an outdoor basketball game in Lexington in November would likely be too difficult to pull off.

But he did throw out at least one suggestion for another sport that could play at Kroger Field.

“One thing I’d be interested in is mid-winter hockey on ice here, or something like that,” Barnhart said. “I mean, we’ve got a (NHL) franchise that sits up in Columbus.

We’ve got one down in Nashville. Could there be a meeting of the minds and do a mid-Winter Classic here? Could we? I don’t know. Would they be interested? I don’t know, but why not?”

Barnhart’s hockey idea might still be a pipe dream, but expect more sports to be played at the stadium in the future. There is a long list of venues trying to host the viral Savannah Bananas baseball team, and UK would surely be interested in that possibility.

Regardless, hosting more concerts in the stadium seems a certainty at this point.

In the last two years, UK has hosted shows from Childers and Chris Stapleton. With both artists hailing from Eastern Kentucky, there was a natural connection to draw large crowds for the first concerts at the stadium.

Finding more artists who could sell as many seats while not opting to perform in larger nearby markets like Louisville, Cincinnati, Nashville and Indianapolis could be a difficult needle to thread. Or maybe as his star continues to rise following the release of a new album in July, Childers could be convinced to return on a regular basis..

“It takes a toll on your stadium,” Barnhart said. “What it does to the field … we got to be really thoughtful about that. … but I think that we’ve got to continue to find ways to use this facility.”