Rose Law Group Reporter Staff
As Arizona State and Arizona prepare to open their seasons, college football has an attendance problem. Average announced attendance in football’s top division dropped for the fourth consecutive year last year, declining 7.6% in four years, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The average count of tickets scanned at home games—the number of fans who actually show up—is about 71% of the attendance you see in a box score, according to data from the 2017 season collected by The Wall Street Journal.
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Teams in the nation’s five richest conferences routinely record thousands fewer people passing through stadium gates than they report publicly. The no-shows reflect the challenge of filling large venues when nearly every game is on TV, and they threaten a key revenue source for college athletic departments.
Florida State, which won the 2013 national title, last season had a scanned attendance that was 57% of its announced attendance. FSU spokesman Rob Wilson blamed personnel and technical issues in scanning tickets and said, “We do not believe the difference is as large as the data appears to show.”
Attendance is more than a vanity issue. The NCAA requires schools to maintain a 15,000 “actual or paid” home attendance on a rolling two-year average to stay in football’s top division.
Despite the rising value of TV-rights contracts, football ticket sales and donations often make up more than half of athletic-department revenues. College sports officials say many factors are incenting fans to stay home including: affordable big-screen TVs; the availability of more games on TV; ever-changing kickoff times that make it difficult to plan ahead; games that span more than four hours; traffic; and rising ticket prices.
Sagging student attendance remains a problem, even at perennial power Alabama. As part of a recently announced renovation of Bryant-Denny Stadium, the school plans to add a student terrace to create “a more interactive and social environment,” athletic director Greg Byrne said.
Not every school pumps up its attendance figures. Of the nearly 100 football programs that gave data to theJournal, just one used a turnstile count for its announced attendance: Navy.
Said athletic director Chet Gladchuk: “It is just the way we do business.”
