Attendance

[Slick Manager of Champs]

Minnesota plays Michigan at home tonight on ESPN at 7. Tune in and look at the stadium Minnesota built and see what is possible.

When you're offering $6 tickets and can't sell out the stadium, there's a problem of too much capacity.

And if you think don't think there's a problem when you have a ranked team playing a nationally televised game and the stadium is 1/3 empty, i don't know what to tell you.

This problem isn't going away. I'm extremely sympathetic to Pitt's current administration because they are listening to fans and doing everything they can to create an atmosphere and sell tickets. But I don't think it's possible to consistently fill Heinz Field with Pitt's fan base.

It makes me chuckle to think that Pitt's prior administrations decided to move into a rented pro stadium right before the point when many other schools decided to build their own stadiums or move back on to campus.

The Pirates played their biggest regular season game in 20 years at PNC park and it was almost 1/4 empty. Smizik and the rest of the Pirate apologists went out of their way to say it wasn't a big deal (Dejan was the only one who had an issue with it). If it's not a big deal for the Pirates, why are you getting so worked up about it for Pitt?

 

[ratking17]

Slick nails it

 

[Pitt Law '04]

The Pirates played their biggest regular season game in 20 years at PNC park and it was almost 1/4 empty. Smizik and the rest of the Pirate apologists went out of their way to say it wasn't a big deal (Dejan was the only one who had an issue with it). If it's not a big deal for the Pirates, why are you getting so worked up about it for Pitt?

You're trying to argue that Smizik's or the "Pirate apologists" position is mine. I never said it wasn't a big deal for the Pirates to have a home stadium that was 1/4 empty for their largest regular season game in 20 years.

Smizik's position isn't mine (I never said anything about the Pirates attendance for that game). And this point has nothing to do with any point I made about the issue of Pitt's attendance.

 

[Pittx9]

This could be a terrible idea, although it would work to some degree. What is anyone else's opinion on getting a new stadium (about 45k capacity) and when we have a big game play those at Heinz with it's 65k capacity?

 

[CaptainMurphy]

This could be a terrible idea, although it would work to some degree. What is anyone else's opinion on getting a new stadium (about 45k capacity) and when we have a big game play those at Heinz with it's 65k capacity?

I like the idea. The administration needs to find a way to increase ticket demand, by winning, decreasing capacity, or both. As strange as it may seem, I think the low low ticket prices negatively affect attendance in that many less-diehard season ticket holders don't feel bad for not attending the non-marquee/lesser games.

 

[sonofabit]

Always 30-35K fans...every year...don't we graduate fans every year on top of the core number?