A Saturday night in Death Valley is every Tiger fan’s happy place. Make that a Saturday night against one of Louisiana State University’s biggest rivals, and you’ve got a game no one can miss.

For Tiger fans who don’t live in Baton Rouge, that can mean a pretty steep price, sometimes over $1000 a night, to stay in the capital city for the weekend. That’s on top of a very expensive football ticket. They’ll book hotel rooms or, more often, look for short-term rentals like Airbnbs that are closer to Tiger Stadium.

“About 60% of the rentals that we do at Airbnb are somehow associated with LSU,” said Matthew Callac, who has been an Airbnb host in Baton Rouge for over six years.

The LSU football season happens every year during the fall semester, attracting a huge group of people who often stay only for a short weekend, making Airbnb perfect for these tourists.

People visit Baton Rouge for many reasons – visiting family, meeting with constituents at the Capitol or fulfilling building construction assignments, as noted by Callac – but seeing an LSU football game is reason enough for many to make the trip.

Callac’s alma mater is LSU, so he’s well aware of the impact its football team has on the community. Despite not being an avid football fan himself, Callac knows what the demand for places to stay during game day weekends is like. Airbnb also recommends price increases for weekends with big rivalry football games in Baton Rouge.

“On any given weekend, you have your nightly rate, but for LSU football games, it ends up just like a hotel where you increase the price because there’s more demand coming into town,” Callac said.

Similar to Callac, Karlee Burleson, library director for LSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine, took a chance on the short-term rental market because of the university’s football culture.

Burleson moved to Baton Rouge at the start of 2023. She and her husband had been renting out a mother-in-law suite at their primary residence for long-term stays, but once the last tenant moved out earlier this year, they decided to capitalize on the football season through Airbnb.

“We first started renting out in October 2024,” Burleson said. “We rented out our room for every football game [afterwards]…Ole Miss, Alabama, Vanderbilt and Oklahoma.”

Despite a late start halfway into the season, Burleson said, they still turned a large profit. Her rate on a weekend without a home LSU football game was $160 a night, while her rate on a weekend with a home football game ran for $1,000 a night.

While a nightly rate of $1,000 a night may come as a shock to some, Fallon Gerald Tullier, research and technology manager for VisitBatonRouge.com, wasn’t surprised at all.

“I bet she sold out,” she said.

Tullier emphasized the university and its football culture’s importance for tourism attraction. In comparison to other regions in the East Baton Rouge parish, Tullier said the surrounding area of LSU has the most short-term rental properties.

She also said that on a regular weekend in Baton Rouge, the occupancy rate usually is anywhere from 65 to 70%. On a game day weekend, the occupancy rate is closer to 85%.

“LSU is such a big brand right now and everyone wants to experience game day in Death Valley,” Tullier said. “People want to do something, people want to experience new things.”

As someone who works closely with a team to plan around visitor traffic, Tullier attributes people’s desire to see LSU and its football team to the welcoming culture of the South. She believes that LSU gameday culture specifically – “gathering together, whether to tailgate, whether to watch sports together, whether it’s going out to eat and watching the game” – is attractive to people not just in Baton Rouge but all over the country.

“It’s just a lot – the brand of LSU itself and college football, especially in the South, is a big draw,” Tullier said. “That’s just a part of Baton Rouge’s DNA – I think that this is one of those culture things you can’t really find anywhere else.”

On any game day weekend, real estate agent Gabrielle Mckellar spends her Friday morning dashing between her 13 Airbnb locations around Baton Rouge in preparation for the weekend’s guests who will arrive later in the day. She said she stays fully booked for home games at LSU. During the weekend of the football game against Ole Miss, she had to decline 27 additional requests for one of her Airbnbs.

“For every home game, I’ve been consistently booked,” she said, “which is nuts.”

Mckellar, 33, grew up on a farm in Mississippi and she had never been to a football game until September 2020 when LSU played Mississippi State.

“It was crazy to be introduced to football as an adult, to Tiger Stadium. Go big or go home,” Mckellar said.

Six years ago, Mckellar lived in a condominium near the Perkins Road Overpass District. She had just gotten out of a relationship and needed money, fast. She decided to move into a cheaper lodging she had access to and start renting out the condo with Airbnb.

“I was struggling. I started this only because I was scared,” said Mckellar. “And it turned into something that brings me so much pride and joy and the ability to serve.”

One of her previous clients requested multiple units a little over a year ago. She decided to take the short-term rental business full-time, in addition to her work as a real estate agent, and took on 12 other properties.

“I just took a chance,” Mckellar said. “Because I know they knew that they were taking a chance on me too, that I could provide multiple, and I did.”

While it takes Mckellar halfway through the football season to turn a profit, she depends on tips from guests and the relationships she has with the people who rent out her properties to extend into the off-season. Some of the people who stay for a game day weekend at one of her properties will reserve a unit for the whole year, especially if they have kids that go to LSU. She’s also had people who called looking for places to entertain their clients and rented out six or seven properties at a time.

While many individuals feel positively about the idea of short-term rentals in an urban setting, others are opposed. Their concerns range from increased noise and traffic issues to the possibility of creating a short-term-rental only neighborhood.

According to the City of Baton Rouge Planning Commission, there are 460 short-term rental properties in the East Baton Rouge Parish. With this high number of properties and not a guaranteed occupancy year round, residents have expressed concerns regarding the possibility of a vacant neighborhood that would create a divide in the sense of community in residential areas. Due to the backlash, EBRP has taken the matter into legal hands to mitigate the conflict.

Lauren Edens, a host who lives in her own property said, “I know Baton Rouge has tried to pass some laws to prevent Airbnb rental property.”

The city of Baton Rouge placed parameters for short-term rentals in East Baton Rouge Parish in November 2022. According to a meeting with the Metro Council in 2022, permits will be acquired for these rentals whether the host resides in the home or not. A study done by the City of Baton Rouge Planning Commission found that regulations were put in place for “owner-occupied” properties on a limited basis in all single-family residential zoning districts.

This decision was frustrating for many neighborhoods as short-term rental properties now must register with the parish. Previous to this decision, short-term rental companies like Airbnb were relatively free of regulation. This parameter is meant to ensure that the owners or Airbnb hosts are paying taxes on their properties.

No matter the backlash to the short-term rental business, it is clearly a very successful entrepreneuring endeavor in Baton Rouge thanks to the tourism brought by LSU.

“LSU provides the missing piece to my hospitality year-round,” Mckellar said.