Maryland AD Jim Smith on dynamic pricing, learning from DMV's pro teams and an "affinity play" in the works

Ahmed Ghafir
Sep 23
3 min read

Maryland football’s strong start coupled with winter sports around the corner has given the athletic department’s new leadership a chance to capitalize on their initial aspirations and goals for change and improvement, and they didn’t waste time working on new limited-time deals and promotions for fans during the bye week.

Monday’s promotion featured 50% off for Washington tickets while Tuesday’s promotion includes an official 2025 homecoming shirt for Terrapin Club donations at the Silver level or above. Fans will be able to enjoy 20% off on shop.umterps.com on Wednesday with discounted tickets available on Thursday for the Oct. 15 game vs. Nebraska. Meanwhile, tickets for the Nov. 1 homecoming game vs. now 11^th-ranked Indiana are available all week with tiered pricing available. This comes weeks after Maryland opened Jones-Hill House for Terpsville Fan Fest, a chance for families and kids to enjoy various amenities on the field for an event open three hours before each home game, a move that helps incentivize more alumni back in College Park through the fall.

Athletic director Jim Smith knows that Maryland has experienced hurdles in getting fans to College Park with many often pointing to the competition among the area’s pro teams, a notion Smith once again dismissed. But Smith also noted the positives about having several pro teams across multiple sports in the area.

“It gives us a good sense for what people will pay for really good football, that’s one. And the second is it gives us two other sets of football fanbases to be able to market to because we’re not competing with the Commanders and the Ravens," Smith said on a podcast with D1.ticker. "So we can make both of those fanbases our team. But by doing a real pricing analysis on how they price gives us an understanding of what the market will bear. We can also look at the products they offer. There’s a lot of comps in our market.”

While some gameday enhancements and game themes were already in the works by the time Smith arrived in College Park full-time, Smith has teamed up with Diana Sabau and Joe LaBue to add other opportunities to build revenue streams around College Park.

“I think that there’s a lot more opportunity from stratification standpoint. I think dynamic pricing has been underutilized in college athletics and I think we can do a lot more of it. I think AI can definitely help. We talked a lot about AI. And it wasn’t just because I knew the audience. The president is an engineer. He’s very much into AI. We’ve been using some AI so I’m a believer that’s a tool to help us grow and I think there’s ways to deploy it that will help not just grow our fan base, but grow our revenue streams.”

Smith also joked he’d share his new strategies for the athletic department “after it works,” but he did hint at a new “affinity play” initiative for fans.

“I’ll just kind of leave from a general perspective that perhaps there’s an interesting affinity play that hasn’t been done yet. It’s not a credit card or a debit card or anything like that. It’s something very different.”

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