I saw an ad on television promoting this and decided to check their website to see if I was dreaming:
This link is to the athletic events website of Middle Tennessee STATE University. Bolding and increased font size are mine.
You get a break in price if you are a Christian and with a church group? Should they not now have to allow the same privileges to any other religious or spiritual group?
I think that you have to look at a couple of things.
First:
This was the only one of the games on the link you provided that had sponsors. It seems to me, without any digging, that the offset pricing (which is group pricing, not religious pricing) is likely to be coming from these sources.
Second: What does the First Amendment say? This is certainly not a denial of the free exercise of religion. Does a college offering group pricing to a group (or multiple groups) that are of a religious nature establish a state religion? I don’t think so.
Third: The discount is for church groups. Certainly, with the addition of the Christian musical group and the location, it is probably that the majority of those who partake of the offer will be from Christian churches. However, the webpage does not indicate that this is an exclusive situation.
Finally: You ask
Do you have any reason to believe that they would not do so? Have they been approached? Do any other religions/spiritual groups have the support in the area to sponsor such an outing?
On second glance, I missed the fact that the first game was sponsored by First Tennessee.
I live in Middle Tennessee. In this part of the country, the word church is understood to refer to a Christian organization as opposed to another religious body.
Your comment about the offset pricing makes sense if the stations are paying for the entertainers. But I don’t see how a privately owned corporation can purchase the right to have the state discriminate on ticket prices.
I ask myself if this could be done at a high school level or would it be considered an attempt at “establishment of religion.” It would be shot down very quickly. It doesn’t take much to be seen as an attempt to establish. And in the South, believe me, there truly are people who want to establish their fundamentalist beliefs in your school, your job, your sex life and your football games.
The state is charging non-Christians more than Christians to enter the gate. In that small way, they are discouraged from the free exercise of their religion.
I have plenty of reason to believe that they would not do so for some of the groups that live in Middle Tennessee. Nashville is 35 miles from MTSU and many of the students are from the city. We have a growing Muslim community amid a large Southern Baptist community. We also have a very large Hispanic population. But MTSU is in a small town smack dab in the middle of the state. No one is going to sponsor Muslim night at MTSU.
Besides, why should “Faith and Family Day” at a state university be set aside for Christians in a multi-cultural and multi-faith area? We have families from many faiths! Why not celebrate diversity of family faiths?
Since I spotted this just yesterday, I have no idea if MTSU has been approached by other groups. But it shouldn’t be an issue of which religions and spiritual groups have support in the area or enough money get special attention.
So you don’t know if it is ‘an issue’? Has that prized football-watching demographic of Tennessee muslims been turned down when they wanted to pay discount prices to see a football game and a Christian band?
Get real. This is a case of being offended for the simple sake of being offended.
Wait. Many places will have some sort of group ticketing pricing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Scout troop, a church, a work group, a family reunion, etc. Is there any reason to assume that this isn’t the case?
IIRC, the relevant court cases make a distinction between the rule that applies to K-12 Public Schools and that which applies to State Colleges/Universities.
And like others said, it seems we’d need more information as to the criteria for this kind of deal. The most likely explanation is the stadium is being rented out as a venue for an entertainer (which is AFAIK a completely legit revenue source), and as part of the deal, the producers/promoters of the concert have paid for having it promotionally tied in with a football game, including reserving X number of tickets for their target audience of church groups to get into both the game and the concert. If the “for further info, call…” bit leads to an explanation that these must be purchased specifically through a particular phone number/agent/website, or up to X limit of seats, then it means the college is not itself giving the churchgoers the preferential treatment, the promoter paid for those tickets and is discounting them to the church group.
Naming it “Faith and Family Day” and including a free Rally Towel, OTOH, is lame. The appropriate freebie would have been Bobblehead Jesuses 
The thing is, precisely because it’s in Middle Tennessee, it’s hard to think of realistic ways to “test” if this would apply to all comers. It’s not like anyone’s gonna book Cat Stevens there any time soon. And a promotion by, say, a Country Music station with a special price break for veterans and military families would not involve a “suspect category”.