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Bowl attendance figures

It's worse than that though, because the Armed Forces Bowl here GIVES tickets away to veterans who just come ask for them. I'm sure other bowls do similar things.
 
Attendance doesn't really matter to the host cities and the R+L Carriers and Beef O'Brady's of the college football landscape. Sure, they'd like to fill up their stadiums, but it's more about showing off.

A bowl game in Yankee Stadium? In The Bronx?
 
I think there are a few major factors here.

One is that ESPN has the rights to most of the bowl games, and they have relegated them to the hard core sports enthusiasts, vs. the cultural phenomenon the bowl games used to be. January 1st used to be an all day football day, you'd switch from network to network watching games and it was an event. Now, it's this whole let's see who is playing on ESPN tonight thing. There have long been arguments that playing on television lowers attendance, but the fact is that attendance has risen with increased television exposure. It's not as big a deal, and we can thank ESPN for part of that. They even took the BCSCG off of broadcast TV. Previously, the different networks would put a great deal of time and effort into promoting their respective bowls.

Second is the watering down of bowl games. They used to be marquee matchups, they used to really matter, but a lot of these games are just pathetic. There are too many FBS bowls, and there are too many FBS teams. So, you get games that are terrible games entirely, and you end up with quite a few that feature one good team vs. one bad team.

The third is the BCS itself. Consider this alternate scenario, in which it would have been hypothetically possible for Auburn, FSU and Alabama to all have been playing different teams (depending on the bowl obligations at the time). You usually had to watch at least two bowl games, may be more, to figure out who was going to be national champion. Now, it's just one game, and that one game is no longer a real bowl game. It used to be, but they took it from the other bowls, and in doing so made them less important yet again. The playoff itself will do far more harm, and we're probably already feeling the impact. The bowl games are becoming more like the NIT, they'll play the games, some people will watch them, but they just won't mean much.
 
ValuJet said:
Attendance doesn't really matter to the host cities and the R+L Carriers and Beef O'Brady's of the college football landscape. Sure, they'd like to fill up their stadiums, but it's more about showing off.

A bowl game in Yankee Stadium? In The Bronx?
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You are right. It's more about having their name splashed on the screen for the sponsor. It's a 3 to 4 hr commercial for them with their name all over the field and the constant mention of the name of the game and where it's located, by ESPN. Who cares about selling the tickets. The crappy bowl in Birmingham was allowing anyone with a veterans ID to get in with 3 extras for free. The city and corporate sponsors get piles of free tickets and just give them away to "constituents". If you, as a local, pay to go to one of these crappy bowl games you should be ashamed of yourself for not trying to find freebies.
 
GrayTide said:
10 of the 35 bowls games had less than 70% stadium capacity. IMO those bowls should be cancelled immediately.
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The New Orleans Bowl had 50+K for ULL and Tulane. That's a great turnout. You can't always judge by stadium capacity -- because they play this game in the Superdome between two NON Big Six teams....that's pretty darn impressive. During the season Tulane seldom gets over 35K in the Superdome --
 
Do you think the new Playoff system for the NC will result in other bowls being less insignificant and receive even LOWER % that what we saw this year?

Will the Playoffs kill the other bowls?
 
I honestly think you should be invited to a bowl game only if your fans are going to show up! The Sugar Bowl would have been a sellout if Bama had been allocated more tickets. After selling all allocated tickets, we apparently asked for more.

If schools like Boise State, LALA (Lousiana Lafayette), UCF, Tulane, Ball State, B. Green, et al want to be in good bowl games, their fans need to show up. Otherwise they need to be punished in $what$ they receive from the bowls for playing there. If your fans don't show up you just may have to pay to be able to go to a Bowl. You must pay the Bowl for any tickets in your allotment that you can't sell.

I do wonder why the BCSNCG attendance total was lower than the Rose Bowl? I just don't think it's because Barners and Seminoles didn't show up.
 
Most of the pre-New Year's Day bowls are not just broadcast by ESPN. They are also owned by ESPN. And to them, the whole enterprise is more about TV inventory (and controlling the bowl system) than it is about filling seats.

But if you somehow expect Sun Belt, MAC, and Conference USA teams that struggle to put 25,000 or 30,000 fans (and sometime less) into their HOME stadiums to somewhat sell half or nearly half of the tickets to a game in a 65-70,000 seat faraway bowl destination, it simply isn't realistic. If those teams can get more than 5,000 fans to travel any major distance, they've probably done very well.

Shifting the major, BCS-legacy bowls back to New Year's Day should help attendance at those games. And if the bottom-tier bowls can focus more on travel distance and attracting close-by teams (like the New Orleans did this year), they'll do better as well.
 
Al A Bama said:
If schools like Boise State, LALA (Lousiana Lafayette), UCF, Tulane, Ball State, B. Green, et al want to be in good bowl games, their fans need to show up. Otherwise they need to be punished in $what$ they receive from the bowls for playing there. If your fans don't show up you just may have to pay to be able to go to a Bowl. You must pay the Bowl for any tickets in your allotment that you can't sell.

I do wonder why the BCSNCG attendance total was lower than the Rose Bowl? I just don't think it's because Barners and Seminoles didn't show up.
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That actually does happen. When teams return a portion of their allotted tickets, it reduces the bowl payout money they (or their conference, as applicable) receives.

In terms of BCSNCG vs. the Rose Bowl, my understanding is that fewer seats were available due to added security and media presence, plus there some chartered buses and planes that didn't make it out there due to the winter storms across the country.
 
RobK said:
Most of the pre-New Year's Day bowls are not just broadcast by ESPN. They are also owned by ESPN. And to them, the whole enterprise is more about TV inventory (and controlling the bowl system) than it is about filling seats.

But if you somehow expect Sun Belt, MAC, and Conference USA teams that struggle to put 25,000 or 30,000 fans (and sometime less) into their HOME stadiums to somewhat sell half or nearly half of the tickets to a game in a 65-70,000 seat faraway bowl destination, it simply isn't realistic. If those teams can get more than 5,000 fans to travel any major distance, they've probably done very well.

Shifting the major, BCS-legacy bowls back to New Year's Day should help attendance at those games. And if the bottom-tier bowls can focus more on travel distance and attracting close-by teams (like the New Orleans did this year), they'll do better as well.
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I do wonder about UCF and their returning, I think, more than 5,000 tickets to the Fiesta Bowl. They have the 2nd largest enrollment of a university in the nation. Maybe it's because of a lack of TRADITION as a winner.
 
There were so many empty seats at the sugar bowl (whole seations). You could still buy tickets to the game on ticketmaster an hour before the game. I think the biggest factor is the ticket price. Most bowl tickets will cost you over $100 each. Then you have to add travel expenses on top of that and it gets really costly.
 
Al A Bama said:
I honestly think you should be invited to a bowl game only if your fans are going to show up! The Sugar Bowl would have been a sellout if Bama had been allocated more tickets. After selling all allocated tickets, we apparently asked for more.

If schools like Boise State, LALA (Lousiana Lafayette), UCF, Tulane, Ball State, B. Green, et al want to be in good bowl games, their fans need to show up. Otherwise they need to be punished in $what$ they receive from the bowls for playing there. If your fans don't show up you just may have to pay to be able to go to a Bowl. You must pay the Bowl for any tickets in your allotment that you can't sell.

I do wonder why the BCSNCG attendance total was lower than the Rose Bowl? I just don't think it's because Barners and Seminoles didn't show up.
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The Tulane/UL-L game had great attendance this year, especially since the match up was not very good. It was much more than I expected to see there. I would have never expected 54k+ to show up for a game like that. It was about 75% full and most of the fans had UL-L stuff on (from what I could see from my couch. Ha!). They actually discussed it during the game. Idk what the draw was. A rivalry I suppose? Hudspeth has done a pretty good job getting a response out of a small fan base. It obviously helped that this game was in LA too.
 
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AlistarWills said:
The crappy bowl in Birmingham was allowing anyone with a veterans ID to get in with 3 extras for free. The city and corporate sponsors get piles of free tickets and just give them away to "constituents". If you, as a local, pay to go to one of these crappy bowl games you should be ashamed of yourself for not trying to find freebies.
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I've gone to the "crappy" bowl in Birmingham every year since they've had it and paid a big whopping $35 every time. I do this as a matter of civic pride and representing my city to out-of-town visitors as best I can.
 
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