Brian Kelly Reveals LSU Football's NIL Budget For 2024-2026

Kelly started a Million Dollar Match campaign, which saw him match every dollar donated to LSU's NIL collective up to a million dollars. An anonymous donor pledged to match that, meaning that the Tigers raised well over three million dollars in a short time frame.

In an interview with Wilson Alexander and The Advocate, Brian Kelly revealed that LSU has gone on to raise roughly 13 million dollars through their NIL collective over the past few months. He didn't go into specifics, but they spent a chunk of that on the 2024 team with a large majority going towards retaining players, signing freshman and getting the No. 1 transfer portal class in 2025.

On top of that, LSU is expected to receive 20.5 million dollars in revenue sharing to directly pay all of their student athletes. Of that 20.5 million, Kelly expects the football team to receive 13.5 million dollars. He stated a lot will go to this year's team, but they will save some for 2026.

This means that LSU will spend roughly 26.5 million dollars on their 2024, 2025 and 2026 rosters combined. That's a lot of money, but still not as much as schools like Texas, Ohio State and Oregon are spending.

Here's the full video from Wilson Alexander breaking it all down:

LSU went from needing significant help in the NIL department to being one of the top dogs in the matter of months. The fans and donors have answered the call and given Brian Kelly the facilities he needs to win a national championship, now he needs to prove he can do it.