As Northwestern University gears up to unveil its brand new Ryan Field in Evanston, where funding costs have grown to $875 million, officials announced Tuesday the first slate of sports matchups and community events that will be hosted at the school’s revamped Big Ten football stadium.
Just two weeks after Northwestern plans to play the Penn State Nittany Lions in the stadium’s nationally televised debut on Oct. 2, university leaders said at a press conference May 26 at the Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston that Ryan Field will also host the annual Evanston Township High School versus New Trier High School football game on Oct. 16.
The longtime North Shore rivalry game will kick off a number of additional “rent free” high school and local community group matches set to be housed at the newly-built football stadium, officials said.
Northwestern’s indoor Welsh-Ryan Arena also plans to host the Evanston vs. New Trier men’s and women’s basketball matchups for the 2026-27 season, along with the Evanston Fellowship of Afro-American Men (FAAM) Basketball Tournament and the Kuumba Evanston Olympics in summer 2027.
The youth sports games are to serve as the stadium’s “second anchor tenant,” with the goal of reinvesting the revenue generated from alcohol sales and concerts at Ryan Field back into the Evanston community to help sustain future opportunities like these, said Pat Ryan Jr., the CEO of Ryan Sports Development and a two-time Northwestern degree holder.
“Last year, around this exact time, we announced a promise, a promise that the future Ryan Field would serve as a place where people gather, connect, build community, learn, play and create lasting memories,” said Dave Davis, Northwestern’s assistant vice president for neighborhood and community relations, in a statement at the May 26 press conference.
“Today, we make true on that promise…because great institutions don’t wall themselves off from the community, we open doors of partnership, we open doors for our neighbors, we make sure that our facility, our assets can benefit communities that can thrive in perpetuity.”
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Several members of the New Trier and Evanston Township High School football and basketball teams appeared at the event to express their appreciation and excitement over the chance to play at the 35,000-seat Ryan Field, a moment, some players said, many high school athletes will only ever dream about.
“The fact that I’ll be playing in a college stadium is crazy,” New Trier football player Peter Cusick, 17, told Pioneer Press.
“I’m mostly looking forward to seeing all the kids out there in the stands,” Cusick said. “Every time we play [Evanston Township High School], it’s one of the highlights of our season.”
And to play your rival at a stadium like this one? “It’s going to be great,” Cusick grinned.
“In 143 days, Evanston will be competing with New Trier in Illinois’ greatest rivalry, in college football’s greatest arena,” said Evanston Township’s Athletic Director Chris Livatino to a room full of applause.
“Having this game at Ryan Field, right along the border between Evanston and Wilmette, ensures that everyone wearing orange and green can experience it firsthand, in a first-class environment,” Livatino added.
Ryan Field is one of the few modern collegiate stadiums to be entirely privately funded, a result of the largest gift in Northwestern’s history, provided by insurance billionaire and retired founder and CEO of Aon Corp., Patrick Ryan and his family.
The $480 million donation by the Ryan Family in 2021 was made directly to facilitate the stadium’s build, along with advancing research in the university’s biomedical, economics and business centers. The Ryan Family has since committed additional funding as the cost of the project has risen, according to previous reporting, but that amount hasn’t been publicly disclosed.
Ryan’s son, Pat Ryan Jr., has been the primary lead on the project, which has faced some hostility from the neighboring City of Evanston and Village of Wilmette regarding its potential for increased noise and traffic congestion in the surrounding area.
“There’s no increased traffic, there’s less traffic because we went from 47,500 [seats] to 35,000,” Ryan told Pioneer Press.
“This stadium opened 100 years ago on October 2, so it’s not like there hasn’t been traffic…there’s going to be less than there has been.”
Noise concerns prompted a larger community pushback over the Chicago Stars professional women’s soccer team’s later bid to play 15 to 17 games of their 2027 season at the newly-constructed field.
The Stars announced back in March their decision to officially remove their proposal with the city.
The team plans to play the remainder of their 2026 season, which runs until November, at Northwestern’s lakefront Medicine Field at Martin Stadium in Evanston.
Plans for their upcoming 2027 season have not yet been finalized, according to a spokesperson for the Stars.
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Ryan added that most of the public opposition to the stadium has stemmed from the university’s decision to host up to six additional concerts at the venue per year, which is now slated to not commence until the summer of 2027, in an attempt to “ease the opening” for community neighbors, he added.
“There are people, there’s town-gown tension that exists, and people don’t take promises simply at the word, you gotta deliver. Today’s about delivering,” Ryan said.
“When we proposed the stadium and asked for these kinds of entitlements, we said something very simple…Northwestern and the Ryan family committed to take the proceeds from these entitlements to ensure that the new Ryan Field became a true community asset and that happens on a lot of levels.”
Ryan later told Pioneer Press the total cost of the project has reached about $875 million, a roughly $13 million increase over what was originally reported, as a result of weather delays and inflation.
“It was originally at that ($862 million), but we pulled some things from year two in, and that was not an overrun, that was just pulling it into year one, because it was cheaper to build.”
“That got us to about $870 (million),” Ryan said, “and then anything above that would just be overtime to make up for weather. With all these data centers being built, frankly, construction costs are going up dramatically.”
If the stadium had been built today, Ryan estimated the total cost would be well over a billion dollars.
“It’s incumbent on the university and the people running the stadium to deliver in a way that is respectful, and that’s what we’re trying to do everyday,” he added.
“It’s not perfect, but if you do that, I think you’ll see that most people will feel like it’s a lot better than [they] expected.”
If all goes to plan, Evanston Township and New Trier Township High School are scheduled to face off at Ryan Field on Oct. 16, following the Northwestern vs. Penn State game on Oct. 2.