College football attendance at lowest levels since 2003
All of those empty seats we saw in a large number of non-Big House games this year were no mirage. College football attendance is at its lowest levels since 2003. It also seems that our students are not alone with respect to their attendance "issues" of the last few years.
I also thought this piece was relevant in view of yesterday's PSD increases noted on an Mgoboard thread.
Five of the six BCS conferences reported attendance decreases, and per al.comreporter Jon Solomon, the only exception -- the Pac-12 -- was an exception only because Cal left its temporary limited-capacity stadium setup in 2011 for its newly renovated Memorial Stadium.
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/eye-on-college-football/2…
Note - this was not OT because BIG football was discussed.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:17 PM ^
Thanks.
December 11th, 2012 at 12:39 PM ^
I'm finding a lot of alumni who get to purchase tickets are turning around and selling these tickets on stub hub for 50 to 100 bucks over what they paid. This causes all tickets to go up on stub hub and other online ticket purchasing sites. I use to go to a lot of Michigan road games against IA and IL. These tickets use to run $30 to $70 each just a few years ago. Now, they all go in the $100.00 to $200.00 range. The cost is keeping me at Buffalo Wild Wings instead of making a 300 to 400 mile Journey to Iowa City or Champagne!
I looked for a pair of Michigan vs NE tickets and all the available tickets were being sold for $200.00 or more...some even $1200.00!December 11th, 2012 at 12:57 PM ^
Buffalo Wild Wings
I'm so sorry you had to attend the Copper Bowl.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:07 PM ^
And hoping they get lucky. Somehow, some way, the Central Michigan basketball game is sold out over break. The lowest ticket price they're asking on StubHub is $55 (and up to $375) For Central! I get the feeling there are going to be a lot of people dressed like seats for that game....
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Upper Baseline 216
Row 36 | Qty 2 Instant Download |
$55.00
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Upper Corner 227
Row 28 | Qty 1 Electronic |
$55.00
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Upper Corner 236
Row 41 | Qty 2 Instant Download |
$56.00
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Upper Corner 227
Row 37 | Qty 2 Instant Download |
$56.00
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Upper Baseline 214
Row 33 | Qty 1 Electronic |
$56.00
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Upper Corner 226
Row 29 | Qty 2 Instant Download |
$56.99
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December 11th, 2012 at 3:35 PM ^
when I was looking to get hockey tickets for my dad's birthday, I was stunned at what people were asking on stubhub. Sorry, but bad seats for MICH-MSU at the Joe aren't worth $300, people.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:33 PM ^
The NE game might not be the best example, because there was a huge demand for tickets: two teams vying for conference champtionship game, with great traditions, first M vs NE game at NE in 100 years. I was able to get crappy tickets for around $120 ea, and they announced at the gane that it was the 2nd highest attendance in stadium history.
But , yeah, I'm convinced some people offer their tickets on Stubhub at ridiculously inflated prices in hopes they can make some money. If there are no takers, they go to the game. But most games there also seem to be brokers who have blocks of 20 or more tickets, but they keep prices inflated or offer just a few tickets at a time to give the illusion of a small supply, then the day of the game there are often many more tickets available at a much lower cost.
Michigan's tradition, success, and fans do tend to make tickets to Michigan games more desirable than many other teams where it's not unusual to see football tickets in BCS conference games for $30 or less.
December 11th, 2012 at 12:44 PM ^
The B1G, which most of the larger stadium's in the country, sucked. Michigan only played 6 home games. Notre Dame only played 6 home games. Arkansas and Auburn had joke seasons.
December 11th, 2012 at 12:57 PM ^
Game attendance vs watching from home..
Game..
PSD
Ticket $80.00
Parking $20.00 - $40.00
Gas $5.00 - $100.00 depending on driving.. I drive 8hrs round trip to attend 3 games a yr....
Food. ????
If you add it up it's about $300 to attend each game when adding everything in. Yeah you can get some ticket deals and lower that some but the reality is to see the games you want, it's getting expensive, and yet you are forced to see the low profile games at the same rate to get season tickets to see the higher profile games. And to make that worse our schedule is quite unbalanced, ND, Nebraska and Ohiost all either in Michigan or away...so one yr it's a great schedule and the next it sucks as only Msu is the big home game.....
December 11th, 2012 at 1:02 PM ^
Did you guys notice that the attendance was always within 2,000 of the all time record that was set for the ND game? The students are coming, it's just crammed as hell towards the bottom. Some of you seem to hate the thinning crowds at the top, but come on....if Im supposed to be up in row 93, but can easily go stand crammed down in 15, im heading down.
Sure, many dont show up for the start of crappy noon games (which happen to be most conference games now that the conference blows), but theyre showing up.
Finally, I do concede that the energy isnt what it used to be. But remember, the upper classmen had to deal with 2 years of RichRod hell, and especially if you're an out of state student, you're not going to get bitten by the football bug when getting pushed around by iowa and slaughtered by wisco and osu. Things will get better, but given that the stadium capacity is 109,900 and we're consistently getting 112,000 for crappy games, it's not as though 1/2 of the 20,000 students with tix arent showing up.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:11 PM ^
a lot of middle class people have retrenched, and are much more careful with their spending since the start of the Great Recession. Add TV to that and I worry people might not come back; hope that the B1G hasn't miscalculated badly, but I won't be surprised.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:23 PM ^
They've retrenched by handing over their pay checks to Apple, Verizon and cable companies.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:28 PM ^
Once again, the announced attendance at Michigan is not an actual count of the people at the stadium. It's a combination of tickets sold plus all the invitations (media, bands, people with field passes, etc.). Dave Brandon admitted recently that the actual count of student tickets scanned was regularly several thousand short of capacity. People in the student section are able to move down precisely because not every seat is occupied.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:28 PM ^
Students are not coming. It's really not as cramped as people make it out to be in the lower rows. Why are so many people moving down? Because its easy, there's room. Not once have I ever been cramped in the student section no matter where I sit.
I once was able to buy 5 extra student tickets for visiting friends for $15 each to the Northwestern game, and it took me a half hour to find all of them. It's that easy.
Reasons students aren't showing up:
1. Bad home schedule. I don't want have to suffer through 3 hours of us pounding UMass (I mean, I do, but it's not as fun as a big game). MSU was fairly full, although still the last 10 rows were empty (I attribute this to the number of drunk students passed out who didn't make the game/people did actually move down low so it was a little cramped. Attendance was maybe about 85-90% of the section by my estimates)
2. Difficult to transfer tickets if you can't make a game. Those validation prices are wayyy too high, and there aren't enough students out there without seasons to sell to. Like I said, lots of students are selling tickets, but other students aren't buying. The university has no efficient buy-back program so tickets go unused.
3. People are buying tickets who don't care about football. It's just the status quo to say "I HAVE TICKETS!!!" and then go when you feel like, or if you're not into football just be like "eh I don't feel like going."
EDIT: oh, and for the Northwestern game, I had people offering me tickets that I turned down just cause they were one section over from what I wanted, just because I could.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:39 PM ^
Aha!
So it IS the student's fault!
December 11th, 2012 at 3:36 PM ^
we had like 3 noon games all season
December 11th, 2012 at 1:03 PM ^
TV quality up, attendance down. I'm 25 and I can not tell you how many people I know that would rather sit their fat ass on the couch than take up a seat and a half at the big house.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:42 PM ^
In addition to the other reasons people have noted for watching on tv rather than live, there is the time element. For students who live on campus the time isn't nearly as bad, because there are no parking and driving issues. But to watch a 3-31/2 hour game live is easily an investment of 8+ hours for most people.
December 11th, 2012 at 1:47 PM ^
December 11th, 2012 at 2:23 PM ^
obviously
December 11th, 2012 at 2:36 PM ^
But the ticket prices. licensing fees and $50 to park in the golf course and a permit to park everywhere else made the decision really easy.
I went again this year to a game and saw how ridiculous it all is. And then of course you have the whole pro combat nonsense.
December 11th, 2012 at 4:51 PM ^
For everyone talking about how college football is pricing out its fans and all that these numbers are very misleading when looking at the totals.
If you subtract new d1 schools from the list the attendance numbers have not really dropped all that much or even at all. Also consider that average attendance has not really dropped at the big time programs which is where the absurdly high prices are so its not ticket prices impacting attendance on a large scale on my way down texas for the bama game I got a ticket to see vandy vs. south carolina (who was ranked #9 ) for like $30.