UW Athletic Department officials said Wednesday ticket prices for football, men’s basketball and men’s hockey would likely remain the same in the 2008-’09 seasons.

John Jentz, associate athletic director for finance for UW Athletics, said the department is in the process of finalizing its 2008-’09 budget to determine all sports ticket prices.

“The cost of business goes up every year and one of our major sources of revenue is ticket prices, so to keep our revenues balancing our expenses we usually rely on ticket price increases,” Jentz said.

“This year, we have the unique situation where we had the influx of the Big Ten Network funds and so we’re going to utilize that.”

UW-Madison announced in November 2007 BTN generated more than $6 million in revenue for the university, $4 million of which went to UW Athletics.

“One of the goals for the budget, which will be finalized at the end of February, is to have no ticket price increases anywhere,” Jentz said.

Vince Sweeney, senior associate athletic director for external relations, said annual ticket increases at UW have been frequent in the past.

“Raising ticket prices just to keep up is a pretty common strategy not only here, but around the Big Ten and around the country,” he said.

“The emergence of the guaranteed money from the Big Ten Network has allowed us … to put together a budget that is fiscally responsible without having to raise ticket prices this year.”

Although many Wisconsin fans with Charter or Time-Warner Cable still cannot view Badgers games on BTN, Sweeney stressed the department’s knowledge that “it remains a concern.”

“We are not actively involved with negotiations, so we can’t really say how those are moving along, but we know that some of our fans continue to be frustrated,” he said. “We always remain hopeful that a deal will be struck its just a matter of when.”

Jentz also outlined the department’s plans at a UW Athletic Board finance committee meeting Tuesday.