By Jimmy Hyams

Tennessee and West Virginia stand to gain a substantial bonus depending on ticket sales for the Queen City Kickoff Sept. 1 at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.

Each team is guaranteed $2.5 million, based on the contract signed in 2014.

If ticket sales reach 66,000, each team gets a $400,000 bonus.

If ticket sales reach 70,000, each team gets an additional $100,000.

If the game is a sellout (72,500) each team gets $200,000 more.

Thus, if the game sells out, each team would get $3.2 million.

One source said ticket sales are about 60,000 at this time, meaning the only likely bonus would be if sales reach 66,000. The ticket sales to achieve any bonus do not include discounted student tickets.

UT has sold its allotment of 16,397. The Vols got an initial allotment of 12,000 but requested almost 4,400 more, based on previous history of Vol fans traveling well to neutral site games. UT sold more than 25,000 tickets to the game last season in Atlanta against Georgia Tech.

West Virginia sold its allotment of 12,000 but did not request more tickets, a source said.

Tickets remain on sale. UT fans can go to allvols.com and click on a link to Ticketmaster to buy tickets.

Meanwhile, UT has sold more than 65,000 season tickets. The number was about 61,000 when the season-ticket renewal deadline ended in May. However, UT offered donors the right to purchase more season tickets without an additional donation and some season tickets in the South end zone did not require a donation.

UT also has offered various three-game packages and has sold about 2,000 of those.

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