How Fresno State athletics aims to raise money and juice the fan experience. What to know
Fans who attend Bulldogs football games already know the drill. They show up, cheer, watch former coach Pat Hill call the Hot Dog Race, belt out Don’t Stop Believin’ with the marching band — and the Bulldogs win.
They’ve won 77% of their home games over the past five seasons. However deep the fan commitment, the 45-year-old Valley Children’s Stadium hasn’t kept up with that loyalty and risks losing that home-field edge without improvements.
This offseason, The Bee has reported stories about Fresno State athletics director Garrett Klassy’s efforts to change that, with a new multimedia rights deal, a stadium feasibility study, and fan experience upgrades that signal a program trying to match the Pac-12 moment later this summer.
Here’s what’s happening and what it means for the Red Wave.
The stadium question getting studied, again
There has been talk about stadium upgrades before: Plans in 2015 and 2023 went nowhere. Fresno County voters twice in the past five years resoundingly rejected sales tax measures that would have funded deferred maintenance and campus infrastructure, including to deal with the stadium.
The last substantive upgrades came in 1991, when 22 sky suites were added on the east side and around 10,000 bench and chair-back seats increased capacity to more than 40,000.
Now there’s a concrete first step. Fresno State has engaged Legends CSL to conduct market and feasibility studies examining a renovation of Valley Children’s Stadium or new construction on campus.
“We’re sitting down and starting this process,” Klassy said. “That doesn’t mean there’s going to be a shovel in the ground right after that, but it gives us a better idea of what we need and how to approach a renovation or something new.”
The study will assess current and future market potential for premium seating and fan amenities the stadium lacks — the kind that drive additional revenue. Klassy pointed to gaps the program hasn’t been able to address.
“The study will give us a better idea on what size stadium we need, what premium spaces people are willing to pay for and what are the right amenities that we need in there,” he said. “It will look closely at the tailgating aspect. … I think there’s a ton of people in this market that we haven’t been able to cater to, whether it’s people with mobility issues, whether it’s business, because we don’t have enough premium spaces to host companies and for companies to host clients.”
Consider where Fresno State stands against its soon-to-be Pac-12 peers: despite a 40,727-seat stadium larger than most future conference rivals and leading the Group of Six conferences in football attendance for three consecutive years, the Bulldogs generated $5.96 million in football ticket revenue in 2025. That trailed Boise State (36,360 capacity, $6.83 million), Washington State (32,952 and $8.05 million) and Oregon State (35,548 and $8.22 million in 2024), according to NCAA filings.
The single-shot T-shirt gun is dead
If you’ve sat in the upper rows at Valley Children’s Stadium and watched a rolled-up T-shirt fall pitifully short of the stands, Chris Pacheco feels your pain.
“I’m so sick of the single-shot T-shirt gun that every third T-shirt doesn’t even make it to the stands,” Pacheco said, as reported by The Fresno Bee.
Pacheco, a former Fresno State defensive lineman who played under Jim Sweeney in 1984-‘85, owns Bulldog Sports Enterprises, the program’s new multimedia rights partner starting July 1. And he’s eyeing a Gatling gun — a rapid-fire, CO2-powered cannon that fires rolled-up T-shirts or promotional items as far as the top rows of the stadium. A double-barrel version can blast 60 T-shirts every 10 seconds. A triple-barrel fires 114 every 10 seconds. There’s even a quadruple-barrel cannon that sends 186 T-shirts flying in 15 seconds.
“We’re going to invest in new ideas, new opportunities, and we’re going to be willing to try things that maybe haven’t been done here before,” Pacheco told The Bee. “That to me is a critical piece, being willing to try something different.”
The guns, produced by Wisconsin-based FXinMotion, are already in use at Texas Tech, where assistant athletics director for promotions and fan engagement Jon Parnell called the double-barrel version a hit they break out at football, basketball and women’s basketball games.
“We’ll have it forever,” Parnell said. “It burns through a lot of T-shirts. If you use it multiple times a game, just be ready to increase your annual T-shirt allotment.”
And in a city that prides itself on tacos? FXinMotion also makes a thermal delivery device — essentially an aerodynamic foam tube — for hot dogs or smaller promotional items that keeps food secure when launched from a cannon. Those barrels, bases and badges can all be branded and swapped out for different sponsors week to week.
Klassy acknowledged the in-game experience needs work.
“That is something in my first two years here, I know that we need to improve,” he said. “That doesn’t fall on our marketing office — they have probably the smallest budget in college athletics when it comes to in-game experience. We need to find new creative ways to really enhance our student experience and our fan experience at all of our events, and we plan on doing that.”
A new deal built to close the revenue gap
The stadium feasibility study and fan experience upgrades are connected by one thread: money. Fresno State’s new multimedia rights deal with Bulldog Sports Enterprises is structured as a revenue-sharing arrangement — no guaranteed dollars, but significant upside. Fresno State receives 90% of net revenue from marquee assets, including jersey patches and football field branding, and 80% of non-marquee assets.
BSE’s contract includes key performance indicators: gross base revenue of $6 million in year one, $6.5 million in year two and $7 million in year three. Hitting those numbers would likely surpass guaranteed revenue from Fresno State’s outgoing deal with Learfield/Bulldog Sports Properties, which had been amended down to $2.5 million in guaranteed rights fees.
The revenue gaps with Pac-12 rivals are stark. Fresno State reported $4.1 million in revenue from royalties, licensing, advertising and sponsorships on its 2024 NCAA filing. Oregon State reported $10.5 million; San Diego State, $9.4 million; Boise State, $7.4 million; and Colorado State, $6.6 million. Overall operating revenue tells a similar story: Fresno State’s $61.8 million in 2025 compared to Boise State’s $95.6 million, Washington State’s $83.5 million and Utah State’s $75.4 million.
“College athletics is changing so much every day, you can’t keep making the same decisions thinking that you’re going to get better results,” Klassy said. “This doesn’t guarantee that we’re going to increase our revenue by X%, but it gives us the opportunity to really earn more than we ever have through hard work and relationships, and I believe in that.”
Jersey patches: small real estate, big potential
One new revenue stream the NCAA approved in January is commercial jersey patches — limited to four square inches. Starting Aug. 1, schools can display up to two logos on uniforms and apparel and one on equipment during the preseason and regular season.
The early deals suggest serious money. UNLV signed a five-year, $11 million sponsorship agreement with Acesso Biologics. Wyoming landed a five-year deal worth $4.5 million with Tallgrass. CBS Sports reported valuations could run from $500,000 to as much as $12 million a year, depending on school and market. Under its deal with BSE, Fresno State would receive 90% of net revenue from jersey patches as a marquee asset.
Klassy’s message to local businesses at the BSE press conference was direct: “This is your opportunity to get in, big or small. The one thing that I will always say, with our move to the Pac-12, our visibility increases.… The exposure has never been greater. The stakes have never been higher, with us going to the Pac-12.”
The Pac-12 era starts July 1. So does the BSE partnership. For fans who’ve been showing up through it all, the program is betting that better days — and better Saturdays — are coming.
This report was produced with the assistance of a proprietary tool powered by artificial intelligence based on our own originally reported, written and published content. Before publishing, journalists reviewed this content in compliance with McClatchy Media’s AI policy.
This story was originally published April 22, 2026 at 9:04 AM with the headline "How Fresno State athletics aims to raise money and juice the fan experience. What to know."
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