KANSAS CITY — University of Missouri administrators formally approved a $250 million renovation of Mizzou’s Memorial Stadium on Thursday, the expected next step for the project.
The stadium’s new-look north concourse is expected to be ready in time for the 2026 college football season and will feature several new premium seating areas. Nothing vastly changed from a design or plan standpoint between an April announcement of renovation plans and unanimous approval from the UM System Board of Curators during a Thursday meeting — except for the implications.
Ground will be broken Nov. 30 in conjunction with MU’s final regular-season football game of the year, a tangible step toward the realization of renderings once again touted after the meeting.
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But there’s still a quarter of a billion dollars needed to fund the renovation, which seemed especially relevant during Thursday’s meeting on the UMKC campus. Administrators detailed the need they saw — and still see — for spending that kind of money at this point in time, when Missouri football is ranked sixth in the nation.
“It wasn’t going to change for a long time if we didn’t do it now. The decision to invest $250 million for Memorial Stadium was not a whim,” said Bob Blitz, a curator and the chair of the board’s Mizzou athletics oversight committee. “We learned that the most public-facing signal of championship expectations is the quality of the stadium of the university. You can see that we’re looking for championships, and you can expect championships.
“Most importantly, we learned that the failure to invest in this today would create a rapid decline in what is our rapidly improving program,” he continued. “Every metric that we looked at compelled us and directed us to make this investment now.”
Athletics director Laird Veatch was hired after the board first unveiled its plans for the north concourse back in April, taking the job with acknowledgment of how the project would dominate his first months on the job.
“We are marching forward quickly and aggressively,” Veatch said. “We’re moving forward in good faith that our Mizzou, loyal fans are going to say ‘yes’: They’re going to say ‘yes’ when we ask for their support, they’re going to say ‘yes’ to purchasing tickets. We are confident, given all the momentum we have.”
The athletics department is expected to cover half of the project’s cost — so, $125 million — through philanthropy.
Veatch said the department is “over halfway there in terms of overall commitments,” which would put the current fundraising tally a bit above $62.5 million.
That progress is worth monitoring. Veatch said in June that Mizzou athletics had secured 10 seven-figure donations, and the athletics department announced an anonymous contribution earlier this year that was expected to include $50 million for the north concourse renovation.
“I would say we have a lot of really good conversations going with several of our donors that will put us in a position to further that along,” Veatch said. “But we do have a lot of work to do, and we need them to say ‘yes’ and support us, but we’re confident we have the capacity and passion to do it.”
The university side of MU will pay for the project’s other $125 million in cost, with at least some expected to be debt borrowed against the addition’s future revenues. There seems to be a substantial chance that the university will seek at least some state funding to go toward Memorial Stadium’s new north concourse.
“We’re not shy about asking them,” Blitz said.
Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey visited Thursday’s meeting ahead of a planned trip to Columbia that will take him to Missouri’s Saturday football game against Boston College.
In public remarks to the Board of Curators, he conveyed confidence in the SEC’s stability amid broader uncertainty in college athletics about the future of revenue sharing, realignment and the eroding oversight of the NCAA.
“Throughout what’s happening today, I repeatedly offer that in these times of change, there’s no better place to be than the Southeastern Conference,” he said.
MU administration tied its decision to greenlight the Memorial Stadium project to its stature within the SEC and Sankey’s presence.
“As an SEC member — the most important conference in the country — we want to be an even stronger partner, stronger member going forward, and that takes investment,” UM System President and MU Chancellor Mun Choi said. “Rest assured, we’re going to work hard throughout our every sector to generate the revenues that we need to make sure that this project is done on time and on budget.”
The Memorial Stadium renovation will add about 2,000 premium seats while constructing new seating areas, above, below and around the famous hill and rock M.
Sankey on Disney-DirecTV dispute
On a vastly different note from the Memorial Stadium discussions, the Post-Dispatch asked Sankey whether an ongoing dispute between Disney and DirecTV that has left the television provider’s customers unable to watch ABC, the SEC Network and ESPN channels — the networks that hold the SEC’s media rights — has reached a level of concern for the conference.
“Each time there’s a carriage negotiation, sure, it’s a level of attention,” Sankey said. “And in fact, I had not even opened the email from my friends at DirecTV, and it was on social media that they had written me a letter. We’ve stayed in constant communication with our colleagues at ESPN and Disney. I know they’re working diligently to provide the opportunity to restore the service. We’ll see what happens. ... Hopefully they can find their way to a conclusion.”(tncms-asset)3c98e300-7040-11ef-af68-fbb61fb75850[0](/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)8e484e28-6f89-11ef-802f-bbc0b6500483[1](/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)c0230b08-6ee0-11ef-86e5-7b832d9621e7[2](/tncms-asset)