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College football attendance declines for a 7th straight year.

It's a multifaceted issue:
  1. Cost - Just so expensive for a family to go. Tickets and parking for sure, but concessions are out of control. A family of 4 could easily spend $100 in concessions alone without blinking an eye. Will be worse this fall with inflation.
  2. Convenience - Sitting in traffic in or out. Waiting in 10-20 minute lines for concessions or the restroom. Or stay at home with those HD TVs, AC, no lines, affordable food. We love a packed stadium at Hard Rock, but a lot of families don't want their kids to be around super drunk, profane, and sometimes fighting fans.
  3. Competitiveness - NCAA created a monster in allowing the SEC teams to get away with everything and having the same teams in CFP every year. There is little sense of fairness or competitiveness anymore. The product is somewhat stale, even for Bama fans. NIL could make this worse. Miami and USC could help bring back some excitement and even the field some by keeping recruits away from the SEC over time.
  4. More options for entertainment - Like @JeddTheFisch said above, sports are not really an identity here. If your team sucks and you have other (and cheaper) options for entertainment, I don't blame people. Definitely an issue in big cities like Miami.
 
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Good. F these other bases mocking our attendance. F them in the A. The same people mocking Miami attendance don’t even hold season tix.

Miami was ahead of the curve. Again. Staying home was so 15 years ago. Miami is about to put an entertaining product on the field and people will attend.
 
blushrts said:
Is any of this attributable to the same 4-5 teams getting into the playoff and the same like 3 teams winning it every year? Cincy was the outlier this year but only about 8 teams have any chance of making it to begin with. The NCAA has turned a blind eye to Bama for so long they have all the talent.
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Huge factor. And this is also impacting TV ratings.
 
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It's the cost. We may still have cheap (relative) ticket prices, but a lot of tickets across the country are absurd. $230+ for nosebleed tickets are the norm. Then you add in concessions, parking, hotel, etc. Forget about anyone trying to bring their family.
It's just not feasible for the average person. Couple that with the convenience of not going and what do you expect?
 
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I don't think it impacts attendance, but I'd like to see quicker games.

What kills me, for example, is this sequence: TD. TV timeout. Extra point. TV timeout. Kickoff. Touchback. TV timeout. IIRC, I clocked it once last season at Hard Rock and between the last TD play and the other team's 1st play was like 7-8 minutes. Add to that some unnecessary reviews and you have 4 hour games.
 
JD08 said:
And paying $200 per game?
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I would hope that it would be cheaper since there would literally be an unlimited number of seats that could be "sold". I don't expect the metaverse to replace in person experiences, but to replace watching on TV. Why watch a screen when you and your avatar can attend the game virtually?
I figure we are about 10 years or less from this happening.
 
Dees Brown said:
Until they streamline the stadium experience I see it declining for a 8th year. We live in a microwave society. Everything has to be instance.
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hey dude nicksplat GIF
 
Forget about taking your family. Unless you got long paper, its just too expensive. Even if you just go to a UM game, sit lower level, eat, drink alcohol, park etc..You dropping about $400 easily on one game. And then those mofos lose. LOL. (this was my experience after the Michigan State game. I was fuming on the way home).

I am just looking forward to the days again when the BIG games were local events. (Like the ND game in 2017). I am not expecting Mario to re-write UM attendance history because even when we had the best product in the nation..our attendance was the greatest. I would just be happy to go back to the days when a BIG game had the whole city buzzing. Thats a great start.
 
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I've been a season ticket holder since I moved back to south Florida in 2002. There's been two times where I was set on not renewing tickets. Right before they announced they were renovating Hard Rock ( I was done frying in the sun for 4 hours every Saturday) and the tail end of this past season before all the Mario smoke started. It's not outrageously expensive to go to UM games, my two season tickets and Orange lot pass cost me $900. But it starts to feel like a hassle when you lose interest in another 7-6 season. Plus you start to add up all the extra costs (tailgating supplies, drinks for the cooler, beers in the stadium, food in the stadium, etc) I think I probably have spent more on drinks inside Hard Rock than I have on the actual tickets over the years. Then you watch a game at home and you have your couch, air conditioning, my fully stocked bar and fridge, HD broadcasts and DVR that can pause, rewind and fast forward and I can really understand why the modern fan doesn't want to go to games as much. It's only going to get worse as stadiums tailor the experience towards smaller, wealthier crowds.

The saving grace is that adrenaline rush that you get being in the crowd for a big game and a big moment. When everything else fades into the background and the only thing that matters to all 65,000 people there is the action on the field. No amount of home comforts can replace that feeling of Trajan Bandy's pick six against the Irish. Or Ken Dorsey finding Jeremey Shockey in the endzone in the final minute. Or mocking the gator faithful as they leave the stadium early. BIg games, big moments, times when you're so incredibly excited, you hug the random stranger next to you after a big play. Walking down the exit ramps at the Orange Bowl or Hard Rock screaming "IT'S GREAT TO BE A MIAMI HURRICANE" It's that kind of stuff that the TV guys can never experience. On TV, you're watching the game. When you're there, you're part of it.
 
RivercityCane said:
The couch. “Best seat in the house”. Seriously, there are so many extrinsic factors that play a role in this result? Economics, social decline, the effeminacy of young men in today’s society, etc.. It is what it is?🤷🏾‍♂️
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Social decline and effeminancy of young men? Perhaps, but if that were the case wouldn't they affect TV viewership and therefore reduce the mind boggling TV contracts that the SEC just signed and the Big 10 are about to sign?
 
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