Some interesting numbers from a UIL Open Records Request I submitted related to state championship football games officials payments for 2025 (I actually requested, and got, data from 2021-present). The average total official pay was $1,276.96.
The lowest on-field official pay, including meal/travel, was $310; the highest on-field official pay (including travel/meal) was $2,285. (The highest total pay for on on-field official was in 2023, $2751.64)
Alternate officials were paid $50 flat fee, no mileage, no meal fee, no per diem.
The highest grossing game in gate receipts (team sales + onsite receipts), was 5ADII Richmond Randle vs SOC, which brought in a whopping $289,618.33.
The lowest grossing was 1ADII, Richland Springs vs Jayton, which brought in $40,170.
To compute pay, they combine the home + visitor ticket sales, and for each day (3 games), they take the total onsite gate and /3 and allocate that to each game.
Total gate revenue (home team sales + visitor team sales + onsite sales) = $1,748,455.00
In 2020, total honorariums (just game fees) for on-field officials came out to $69,990. In 2025, it was $93,000.
None of these numbers include streaming revenue from FoxSports Southwest, Bally, or Victory+. I've no idea what kind of revenue was generated for UIL from online streaming, but I do know how many pairs of eyeballs watched games on Victory+: 2.1 million. (source:
https://www.dallasnews.com/high-school-sports/football/2025/12/23/texas-high-school-football-state-championships-eclipse-2-million-viewers-on-victory/) And in 2023, Bally had 250k, so what, 8x increase in online viewership in three years?
That to me is a pretty compelling argument that NFHS streaming games, along with local school districts, that revenue should be counted in game fees for officials, since schools charge for access as does the NFHS streaming service.
Just food for thought.
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