With Premium Seating Not Sold Out, What Is The Real Capacity of the Stadium?

We will still have the highest attendance which is all I care about.

I bet the athletic department will fill all those seats with guest, profs, recruits, etc.

They would fill the suites with guests of early reserved suite holders at WORST. One would hope with all of the options of Mott etc that great alternatives will be taken to fill

The seats will be filled, in some manner. They will make sure of it. Perhaps some Dominoe's employees would like to attend.

percentage of club seats were sold back in July.

the capacity of 109,901 will never be the announced attendance anyway.

My guess is that the minimum announced attendance this year will be 112,000 which counts "extras" at the game that may not be sitting in actual numbered seats....club, suite, or otherwise.

Not related to filling the premium unsold seats, but:

Took a look at Stub Hub. Looks like about 120 seats available. A few in the premium seating.  Looks like $300-$500 for premium tickets.

These are folks reselling their tickets -- really? How could you miss this game if you have tickets? How can you not have friends for any extra tickets?

Agreed, I would think they'd give them to boosters and/or affiliates who support the program.

But after saying that, I would really like to see them donate the seats to a program like Big Brother / Big Sister.  Not only would it give a child a once-in-a-lifetime experience (and make him a UofM fan for life), but just think of the PR this would have.

The big untold number is how many of those Club Seats and Suites have been "reserved" and subsequently fully paid for.  While there may be 20% of the Club available, that doesn't mean that everyone in the remaining 80% has followed through on their deposit.  Theoretically the seats are still theirs, but they may have no intention of paying the final donations.  There's some credible rumors floating around that while commitments were quick to come in on a lot of seats, with the economy, and most of those people keeping their lower-bowl seats anyway, there's more than a few commitments that have yet to be followed through on, and there's a bit of panic involved.

As for the suite availability numbers, there's been a large amount of migration from the suite level down to the Club Seats after the initial commitment.  Let's face it, the view from the suites are a bit on the stratospheric side, and I think anyone who looked at both the suites and the club level within 5 minutes of each other would pick the club seats any day of the week.

And if we want to see what it looks like when people don't sit in their premium seating, look at the deck at Yost on any given Friday or Saturday night.  Those tickets have been sold out for years, but I don't think I've ever seen a game (no matter how big) where they've been even 90% full.  It's kind of lame to say the least.  Either the people are sitting in their other season ticket locations (with an almost certain better view), or they just like throwing money at the AD.

It's a total no-brainer, though, that those seats will be full on Saturday.  There's no way the AD leaves glaring holes open if they can help it.  The TV cameras will without doubt be panning often on all the fancy new seats.  

dave brandon spoke to the MMB tonight and said that there would be 111,000 people in the stadium come saturday, FWIW

dave brandon spoke to the MMB tonight and said that there would be 111,000 people in the stadium come saturday, FWIW

The capacity is 109,901 regardless of how many seats are sold. It's not like they tear the unsold seats out.

The Victors Club put out an offer a few days ago to all premium seat holders to purchase additional season tickets in the premium seating areas at just the cost of the tickets (no PSD required).

I looked at the game by game attendance last year. The stated attendance at the Delaware State game was 106,304.

I think the "official" capacity of the stadium may have been reduced from 107,501 because of the modifications made for wheelchair accessible seating even though it was never official (that I know of).

With all that said, there were obviously several thousand unsold tickets that day (I believe that attendance counts all sold tickets [regardless if the person attends or not] plus the visiting band, visiting players, coaches, all folks in the pressbox, etc.

Was this a result of some seats not being sold as season tickets because of the renovations or were there season tickets available that were never sold?

Not too sure if this has been said yet or not, but  premium ticket holders received letters from the AD saying that the extra seats are available for sale on individual games, but only to those that have already purchased suites, and the premium seats. I suspect as others have said we'll see some groups use the seats - they will not go unused.