Attendance

[Sean Miller Fan]

A lot of the local media have been saying attendance at Heinz Field is the #1 issue. For years, I have been saying attendance is NOT the issue, not for a P5 school of our size in an NFL town. I just wished the people at Pitt would realize 40K is a good crowd. We're not going to draw 70K for GT or NC or anyone except PSU, ND, or WVU.

How can we create a good gameday atmosphere with 40K fans in a 70K seat stadium? Using all 70K seats and having fans spread out in the cavernous stadium has been disastrous and looks terrible.

If you make 45K seats availabe and there are 40K sitting in those seats, that creates a better atmosphere. Tarps or no tarps, hopefull Lyke realizes the key to create a better environment is crowding fans in smaller areas.

 

[AJSH2P]

Completely agree. Filling Heinz isn't realistic for Pitt. Making Heinz into a 45K-50K stadium would be much better.

 

[joeydavid]

Any idea how many seats are in the Upper closed end?

I have no idea why they sell those seats for the average game.

 

[BuffetParrothead]

Disagree! Many of you are really small thinkers which is one reason why PITT athletics is dying!
College football is all about fans, attendance and the gameday atmosphere. Major TV network announcers announce attendance as their cameras pan the crowd pre game!

Recruits, recruit familes, and coaches understand why a stadium is tarped -no fan interest! Futhermore the pro town excuse only sells in Pittsburgh recruits from out of town don't understand that and if they did why would they want to play for PITT?

Who wants to play football for a U where the fans aren't even interested in the program>>>

PITT would only be fooling itself, a few posters on this site and in this thread if they tarped Heinz field.

A shrinking fanbase will only shrink futher so what does PITT do then tarp Heinz field to 25k??????

The only answer is to somehow develop more fan interest and expand the fanbase with younger people to protect the future!

We have a new AD who many of you think is " Wonder Women. So job # 1 & # 2 should be getting more PITT fans in the house and raising more money for PITT sports!

Without a larger fanbase it will be hard to increase the money raised since its harder to get more money from less fans. Its a lot easier to raise money with a larger fanbase! You get money from the new fans and more from the existing fanbase!

Without a young expanding fanbase the future of PITT football and basketball isn't a bright one!

 

[TIGER-PAUL]

I think about 7k bleachers.
If more of the seats were pewter color, it would look better.

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

Agree. Pitt doesn't have an attendance issue as much as it has a stadium capacity issue.

I don't know how many times I bring up this example. Stanford sucked. Played in this cavernous 80,000 seat stadium. Sucked. Nothing. In 2006, they tore it down and on the same site rebuilt a 50,000 seat stadium.

In the 11 seasons prior to their stadium rebuild they went to 3 bowl games, and had 2 seasons of over 7 wins (and that was one 8 and one 9 win season). In the 11 seasons after?? 8 Bowl games. 3 seasons of 12 wins, 2 seasons of 11 wins and a 10 win season. Plus two 8 win seasons.

I am not saying that the stadium was the only reason, but you can't tell me that there was no correlation.

 

[revampedpanthers]

Initially they should tarp off the upper level and bunch the 40 to 45k together. Then if the need arises, big games/games against ACC level competition and the team is good raising the need for more seats you can sell those tickets. If the team is good for a period of time, you will see more students continue to come back for games.

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

Disagree! Many of you are really small thinkers which is one reason why PITT athletics is dying!
College football is all about fans, attendance and the gameday atmosphere. Major TV network announcers announce attendance as their cameras pan the crowd pre game!

Recruits, recruit familes, and coaches understand why a stadium is tarped -no fan interest! Futhermore the pro town excuse only sells in Pittsburgh recruits from out of town don't understand that and if they did why would they want to play for PITT?

Who wants to play football for a U where the fans aren't even interested in the program>>>

PITT would only be fooling itself, a few posters on this site and in this thread if they tarped Heinz field.

A shrinking fanbase will only shrink futher so what does PITT do then tarp Heinz field to 25k??????

The only answer is to somehow develop more fan interest and expand the fanbase with younger people to protect the future!

We have a new AD who many of you think is " Wonder Women. So job # 1 & # 2 should be getting more PITT fans in the house and raising more money for PITT sports!

Without a larger fanbase it will be hard to increase the money raised since its harder to get more money from less fans. Its a lot easier to raise money with a larger fanbase! You get money from the new fans and more from the existing fanbase!

Without a young expanding fanbase the future of PITT football and basketball isn't a bright one!

This is the old school way of thinking. You have to have realistic goals. For years, different AD'd have publicly stated their goal is to sell out Heinz Field and they all failed. Unless Pitt was a consistent Top 10-15 program, consistently competing for CFP spots, selling out Heinz Field for a non-"event" game is completely unrealistic. It just is. Pitt has a lot of local sports competition and its alums are also enormous fans of the local pro teams.

Instead of trying to sell 70K tickets, we need to find a way to make 40K look like 40K looks at BC, GT, Stanford, TCU, and Baylor. We are never going to be Florida, South Carolina, or Iowa in terms of attendance and we shouldn't try to be.

I really believe the upper deck endzone and non-TV view upper sideline should be closed. There is no reason why Pitt cant make Heinz into a 45K seat stadium on gamedays.

 

[Gunga_Galunga]

The #1 issue for Pitt football is winning. If they're ranked in the top 10 and winning, nobody will care about attendance.

 

[MartyInLawrenceville]

I mentioned this in another thread; the people that no show are a big part of the problem. Those lower bowl empty seats are sold, but no one sitting in them. Pitt tickets are so cheap, the ticket holder feels no financial repercussions for not going to the game, or giving the tickets away so that somebody else could go. My seats are on the home,side 30 yard line, 25 rows up. I think I pay $250 per seat, including my Panther Club donation. At Penn State, those same tickets are probably triple the price, at least. If they were more expensive, someone might think twice before blowing off a game. Or, if they absolutely had to miss, they would make damn sure that somebody used the tickets.

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

If they were more expensive, someone might think twice before blowing off a game. Or, if they absolutely had to miss, they would make damn sure that somebody used the tickets.

Or they just wouldn't buy them in the first place.

 

[HailtoPitt]

How can we create a good gameday atmosphere with 40K fans in a 70K seat stadium?

We can't.

 

[Panthergrowl13]

Tarping is the answer.

Hope the new AD realizes as much.

Former AD Barnes

Killer B

HAIL TO PITT!!!!

 

[bubba31]

I would like to take you older folks back to the days of championship wrestling with Chilly Billy and Ringside Rosie.....

Who Can?? Ameri can.....

There may have been 80 people sitting around the ring.....but in the shadows behind these fans were cardboard cutouts of fans...in silhouettes due to low lighting....that made the place look packed.

so the answer is simple....

dim the lights at HF and grab your scissors.....

 

[Revenge Of The Noise]

I would like to take you older folks back to the days of championship wrestling with Chilly Billy and Ringside Rosie.....

Who Can?? Ameri can.....

There may have been 80 people sitting around the ring.....but in the shadows behind these fans were cardboard cutouts of fans...in silhouettes due to low lighting....that made the place look packed.

so the answer is simple....

dim the lights at HF and grab your scissors.....

They could do that with holograms today. Put that scary looking device holding the camera they run across cables over the field to good use, install the hologram laser projector on that. If it happens to malfunction and fry the eyes of the real fans there, well, frankly for a lot of games I might actually have welcomed that.

Seriously, attendance and revenue are two different things. I hope they've done studies that have proven that keeping all 70000 seats for sale sells more at a lower price than closing off the top decks and selling the rest for more money would. If they haven't done such a study, they should. I honestly don't have an opinion on what the result would be. I suspect they still wouldn't sell as many or at as high as price as some think they would. The product simply has been mediocre for too long. Investing in winning would cure attendance for sure, but again, not free by a long shot, and attendance and revenue are not the same thing.

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

The #1 issue for Pitt football is winning. If they're ranked in the top 10 and winning, nobody will care about attendance.

How many programs are consistently ranked in the Top 10? That is what it would take for Pitt to sell out these games. Basically, we'd have to be LSU. Consistent Top 10, contend for NC every few years. That's unrealistic.

Pitt does not need 70K available seats.

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

I mentioned this in another thread; the people that no show are a big part of the problem. Those lower bowl empty seats are sold, but no one sitting in them. Pitt tickets are so cheap, the ticket holder feels no financial repercussions for not going to the game, or giving the tickets away so that somebody else could go. My seats are on the home,side 30 yard line, 25 rows up. I think I pay $250 per seat, including my Panther Club donation. At Penn State, those same tickets are probably triple the price, at least. If they were more expensive, someone might think twice before blowing off a game. Or, if they absolutely had to miss, they would make damn sure that somebody used the tickets.

A big reason for that is corporations own a lot of those seats and they don't use them. The 2 seats next to me are corporate-owned and in the last 2 years they've only been used for ND, PSU, and VT (was surprised they were used for VT). I would venture to say there are several thousand corporate-owned lower level tickets and 75% of them go unused for almost every game.

 

[BuffetParrothead]

This is the old school way of thinking. You have to have realistic goals. For years, different AD'd have publicly stated their goal is to sell out Heinz Field and they all failed. Unless Pitt was a consistent Top 10-15 program, consistently competing for CFP spots, selling out Heinz Field for a non-"event" game is completely unrealistic. It just is. Pitt has a lot of local sports competition and its alums are also enormous fans of the local pro teams.

Instead of trying to sell 70K tickets, we need to find a way to make 40K look like 40K looks at BC, GT, Stanford, TCU, and Baylor. We are never going to be Florida, South Carolina, or Iowa in terms of attendance and we shouldn't try to be.

I really believe the upper deck endzone and non-TV view upper sideline should be closed. There is no reason why Pitt cant make Heinz into a 45K seat stadium on gamedays.

Looks to me that your " new school " approach will eventually end up with no or scaled down PITT football!
Filling the seats is one thing but you have to expanded the fanbase and have an appropriate sized fanbase for donations.
I still believe due to the incompetence of PITT admin and AD's we as PITT fans have been conditioned to believe we need less seats.
Like I said before as we retreat to 45k when will it be time to retreat to 25k, 10k and bye bye football!
If we cant atleast maintain or grow our fanbase we should pack it in now and save the time and effort!

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

This is the old school way of thinking. You have to have realistic goals. For years, different AD'd have publicly stated their goal is to sell out Heinz Field and they all failed. Unless Pitt was a consistent Top 10-15 program, consistently competing for CFP spots, selling out Heinz Field for a non-"event" game is completely unrealistic. It just is. Pitt has a lot of local sports competition and its alums are also enormous fans of the local pro teams.

Instead of trying to sell 70K tickets, we need to find a way to make 40K look like 40K looks at BC, GT, Stanford, TCU, and Baylor. We are never going to be Florida, South Carolina, or Iowa in terms of attendance and we shouldn't try to be.

I really believe the upper deck endzone and non-TV view upper sideline should be closed. There is no reason why Pitt cant make Heinz into a 45K seat stadium on gamedays.

Looks to me that your " new school " approach will eventually end up with no or scaled down PITT football!
Filling the seats is one thing but have an expanded and appropriate sized fanbase for donations etc is another.
I still believe due to the incompetence of PITT admin and AD's we as PITT fans have been conditioned to believe we need less seats.
Like I said before as we retreat to 45k when will it be time to retreat to 25k, 10k and bye bye football!
If we cant atleast maintain or grow our fanbase we should pack it in now and save the time and effort!

Can you name a football program fairly similar to Pitt that consistently sells 70K seats? No. Because it is not possible. Nobody is going to make a decision to give up football solely because we close upper deck sections. That's ridiculous. We need energy in a scaled-down Heinz Field.

 

[pittgoat]

Tarping is so weak. I really hope that never happens. Just screams little league.

Fact is there is not much Lyke or Amy athletic director can do. They've tried damn near everything to get people to come. Tickets are dirt cheap. The team needs to win more than it has in the past 30 years. They need to string together a few double digit win seasons, not one every decade or two.

One thing they can work on is making new and future alums care enough that hey want to support the team the rest of their lives. Many older alums are lost causes. Negative nancies that look for any excuse not to come.

Again, winning would help more than any plan or scheme by the athletic department to bring people in.

 

[Gunga_Galunga]

How many programs are consistently ranked in the Top 10? That is what it would take for Pitt to sell out these games. Basically, we'd have to be LSU. Consistent Top 10, contend for NC every few years. That's unrealistic.

Pitt does not need 70K available seats.

They still wouldn't sell out, so it's useless to worry about it. Put your effort into the coaches, players, training/practice facilities, etc. They rent a stadium, it is what it is.
Tarping, free t-shirts, or any other lame ideas won't do anything. I literally can't give tickets away.

Until someone comes up with a huge pile of cash for a stadium, they are playing at Hienz. Just win and nobody will care about attendance.

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

I mentioned this in another thread; the people that no show are a big part of the problem. Those lower bowl empty seats are sold, but no one sitting in them. Pitt tickets are so cheap, the ticket holder feels no financial repercussions for not going to the game, or giving the tickets away so that somebody else could go. My seats are on the home,side 30 yard line, 25 rows up. I think I pay $250 per seat, including my Panther Club donation. At Penn State, those same tickets are probably triple the price, at least. If they were more expensive, someone might think twice before blowing off a game. Or, if they absolutely had to miss, they would make damn sure that somebody used the tickets.

I have been saying this for years. Which is completely tied to supply and demand. Supply way, way outstrips demand. Another reason to shrink capacity and create more demand and raise ticket prices. It is all part of the answer, and part of the same algorithm.

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

Looks to me that your " new school " approach will eventually end up with no or scaled down PITT football!
Filling the seats is one thing but have an expanded and appropriate sized fanbase for donations etc is another.
I still believe due to the incompetence of PITT admin and AD's we as PITT fans have been conditioned to believe we need less seats.
Like I said before as we retreat to 45k when will it be time to retreat to 25k, 10k and bye bye football!
If we cant atleast maintain or grow our fanbase we should pack it in now and save the time and effort!

But you are not being realistic. The market and demand for Pitt football is not there at the 65K level. Not there. Will never be there. Did you guys read my post about Stanford? Do I in invisible ink or are you too stupid or arrogant to understand what happened at Stanford.

The difference, we cannot physically scale down Heinz, so it is either get our own stadium that is right sized or make Heinz temporary the capacity that best fits Pitt.

I guess to address this "tarping" another way. Is those of you against it, let me ask you a question. Say you have all the money in the world and can build the best possible Pitt football stadium, on campus. How big (capacity) would you make it?

 

[Revenge Of The Noise]

Physical tarps aren't necessary. Simply sell season tickets only in the lower bowl and club.

For marquee games offer opportunities to buy expanded packages for extra seats in the upper levels for those games only ... and, yes, at premium prices.

If Pitt inexplicably (sad but true) has a phenom year, and some later games that weren't expected to be "marquee" suddenly look like attractive events, the upper decks can be opened up for sale the week before (and walk up of course). Some who scoff at that think it's still the 50s and the cumbersome "will call" era. It's 2017 and people are used to buying tickets electronically and printing right before the game. Leverage the flexibility and convenience technology that allows.

 

[HailtoPitt]

Can you name a football program fairly similar to Pitt that consistently sells 70K seats? No. Because it is not possible. Nobody is going to make a decision to give up football solely because we close upper deck sections. That's ridiculous. We need energy in a scaled-down Heinz Field.

The University of Washington is fairly similar and they seem to have about 15k more fans per game on average. They had a chance skip renovating their stadium and instead play in CenturyLink Field full time, but they aren't stupid.

 

[9nationalchampionships]

UW has twice the enrollment of PITT.

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

UW has twice the enrollment of PITT.

Not to mention you don't drive 2 hours (hell 1 hour) from UW and run into PSU, tOSU and WVU fanbases.

 

[Slick Manager of Champs]

why does this get discussed into the ground? All national pundits agree that urban schools can't be compared to cow pasture universities in terms of attendance. UCLA, Miami, GaTech, etc. It is the local idiot media that doesn't see this.

C'mon, Pittsburgh is not that big of a city, plus there are three pro-teams, two of which are consistently challenging for a title and the third which has the dumbest fan base in sports that doesn't care if the team wins as long as they have fun at the ball park and the owner makes lots of money. It is a notorious band wagon town. When a team is hot, the fans will jump on the band wagon. I know everyone was disappointed with the Duke & Syracuse attendance coming off the Clemson game, but the games basically had no meaning. No chance for the Coastal at that point. Once you take the meaning away, the casual fan is lost.

Winning will cure a lot of ills. But yeah, Heinz is a problem in that it is too big. And the problem with getting the students hooked is also a major issue. It is a travesty that they abandon the team in the 4th quarter. Transporting them to the games is a problem. Extending the T to Oakland might help, or that high speed bus that is being proposed. But if you don't get the students hooked now, they will never buy season tickets after they graduate.

 

[9nationalchampionships]

why does this get discussed into the ground? All national pundits agree that urban schools can't be compared to cow pasture universities in terms of attendance. UCLA, Miami, GaTech, etc. It is the local idiot media that doesn't see this.

C'mon, Pittsburgh is not that big of a city, plus there are three pro-teams, two of which are consistently challenging for a title and the third which has the dumbest fan base in sports that doesn't care if the team wins as long as they have fun at the ball park and the owner makes lots of money. It is a notorious band wagon town. When a team is hot, the fans will jump on the band wagon. I know everyone was disappointed with the Duke & Syracuse attendance coming off the Clemson game, but the games basically had no meaning. No chance for the Coastal at that point. Once you take the meaning away, the casual fan is lost.

Winning will cure a lot of ills. But yeah, Heinz is a problem in that it is too big. And the problem with getting the students hooked is also a major issue. It is a travesty that they abandon the team in the 4th quarter. Transporting them to the games is a problem. Extending the T to Oakland might help, or that high speed bus that is being proposed. But if you don't get the students hooked now, they will never buy season tickets after they graduate.

But if you don't get the students hooked now, they will never buy season tickets after they graduate.

This

 

[PantherO]

But if you don't get the students hooked now, they will never buy season tickets after they graduate.

This

Speaking of which. I spoke to a recent Pitt grad (recent by my terms..2009) When he was a student, he told me that him and his buddies would just stay on campus for the Football games and watch the ones on TV. Said it was a hassle to get to the games. I am not bringing up a stadium debate, but these are the kids you need to hook in that become season ticket holders.

I have many great memories of going to Pitt football games when I was on campus (and so were the games). That is the reason I became a season ticket holder. It is a real issue regardless of where the stadium feasibility issue.

Best Case, on campus 50K stadium with expansion capabilities and gain student support.
2nd Best Case, Win 10+ games a year and start to build city following and in 10-15 years, have good attendance.
In the mean time, tarp the upper decks and force the lower bowl to fill in.
Would Help a lot, Get black or navy seats instead of yellow to mask attendance.
More than likely, none of the above and continue these discussions once a month.

 

[HailtoPitt]

UW has twice the enrollment of PITT.

How about alumni?

 

[TIGER-PAUL]

I'm for seat colors. Zero impact for steeler games. Still smoke and mirrors but not white flag of tarps. Aren't some of the seats due for maintenance replacement?

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

How about alumni?

Ummm......don't those two usually go hand in hand?

 

[pitt2533]

Ummm......don't those two usually go hand in hand?

Maybe they have a lot of drop outs. LOL....

 

[BuffetParrothead]

Can you name a football program fairly similar to Pitt that consistently sells 70K seats? No. Because it is not possible. Nobody is going to make a decision to give up football solely because we close upper deck sections. That's ridiculous. We need energy in a scaled-down Heinz Field.

We don't have to sell 70k to stay at Heinz/
Today we're lucky to sell 50k tickets on a consistent basis except for big games. I go to every home game and announced attendance is inflated.
PITT should target 55k fans as a short term ( 3 yr goal). That would make Heinz look decent and move that up to 60k for a longer term goal.
Target groups:
Students - get them hooked/interested now so when they make big money they come back and donate.
Young Alums- they have jobs and some capable of reproducing have families who are future fans
Families in the area-
General Pittsburgh population-

PITT's fanbase is aging so within an infusion of new fans the 45k you speak about will be 25k in short order!

PITT needs to expand its fanbase with young people and try to hit the 50k-60k attendance mark to keep PITT football alive longterm!

 

[pitt2533]

The University of Washington is fairly similar and they seem to have about 15k more fans per game on average. They had a chance skip renovating their stadium and instead play in CenturyLink Field full time, but they aren't stupid.

So when we played on campus our attendance was higher? Sorry there is no correlation between that and it is meaningless for the purposes of this discussion. Having an on campus stadium will not improve attendance. There are many years of data that proves that.

 

[Panthergrowl13]

Again tarping is the answer and should be tried starting with the upper end zone (bench seats) as a first step.

Pirates tarped a football stadium (Three Rivers) down 50% (60,000 to 30,000 seats) to reconfigure to a baseball crowd. No one complained about the tarps. If you didn't tarp Three Rivers Stadium for baseball, it would look like a disaster when baseball games were televised.

So much easier to Right Size Heinz Field (Football Stadium) for Pitt Football Games.

When Pitt would play at Cincinnati Nippert Stadium (capacity 40,000 seats) the stadium would look filled and energized. Cincinnati home attendance averages just 37,000 fans.

I personally would like to see Pitt football seating reduced to 50,000 seats at Heinz with Pitt playing to near capacity crowds for most home games.

HAIL TO PITT!!!!

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

Do we want to again outline the challenges??

1) Last 10 win season? 1981. I should stop there. But....
2) Pitt's enrollment and alumni base. Pitt is towards the bottom of the P5 schools as far undergrad enrollment.
3) Pro Sports City. Steelers, uber popular, Pens and Pirates very popular.
4) "Landlocked". Drive 70 miles in any direction you are in the heart of Penn State, Ohio State or WVU fan territories.
5) Essentially a 40-45K fanbase being placed into a 70K pro stadium. The Stadium capacity is not just much bigger, the entire physical footprint of Heinz spreads out attendance, further adding to the poor optics.
6) Yellow seats. Which takes the bad optics and makes it worse.
7) Lack of Pitt friendly local media.

 

[Panthergrowl13]

Choice.

Spend $400 million for a new erector set 50,000 seat Pitt Stadium (used 28 hours per year) or spend less than $ 1 million for tarps at Heinz Field.

Personally I like Heinz Field amenities and Bars, Restaurants, Hotels, Casino, Parking etc surrounding Heinz Field for game day activities.

HAIL TO PITT!!!!

 

[BuffetParrothead]

Do we want to again outline the challenges??

1) Last 10 win season? 1981. I should stop there. But....
2) Pitt's enrollment and alumni base. Pitt is towards the bottom of the P5 schools as far undergrad enrollment.
3) Pro Sports City. Steelers, uber popular, Pens and Pirates very popular.
4) "Landlocked". Drive 70 miles in any direction you are in the heart of Penn State, Ohio State or WVU fan territories.
5) Essentially a 40-45K fanbase being placed into a 70K pro stadium. The Stadium capacity is not just much bigger, the entire physical footprint of Heinz spreads out attendance, further adding to the poor optics.
6) Yellow seats. Which takes the bad optics and makes it worse.
7) Lack of Pitt friendly local media.

# 1 & 4 can be fixed by focusing on football and getting better. The Hoopies did that!
# 6- should be able to work with whomever owns the Heinz "dump" to fix this.
#7- should be at the top of "Wonder Women's" Lyke's list!
She should go to the PG and other media outlets with one of her softball bats and begin to cultivate an understanding between them and PITT.
I would bring the bat that gives her the most bat speeeeed! Right!