2014 Football attendance figures released

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2014 Average attendance:

BYU 57,141



This puts BYU at #33 among all division 1 football schools and the highest non-P5 member with the exception of Notre Dame (#18 80,795). Utah came in at #50 with 46,437. The highest average attendance for a G5 member was East Carolina at #51 with 44,786



This was the home schedule:

Houston

Virginia

Utah State

Nevada

UNLV

Savannah State (in the weather no less)



I think the later games in that schedule along with the mid-season skid hurt the overall numbers. But in general they are better than I would have expected for as bad as things felt like it went last year. I'm sure the Utah State game was a boost as well. But with no Utah or Utah State on the home schedule for 2015 hopefully the numbers don't dip too much.



2016 home schedule

Boise State

UConn

East Carolina

Cincinnati

Wagner

Fresno State

I'm surprised it was that good (skeptical might be a better word). Other than the Utah State game it didn't seem like we would have ever been more than that. The day of the week and time of game really seemed to hurt last years attendance coupled with the schedule. Based on memory it seems like the better games to start the season were on Thursday nights or something (I seem to remember being at the Virginia game and thinking how is this not more full. This is the best home game of the year based on ranking (maybe I'm thinking Houston)). The four game losing streak coming in to the bad home games didn't help. 57k is 90% capacity. It didn't seem that full.



Maybe we hired the Huntsman Center auditing department to do our count?

Houston was on a Thursday, Utah State was on the usual Friday, then Virginia, Nevada, UNLV, and Savannah State were all Saturdays.

While the stadium wasn't really ever full, Utah St., Virginia, and Houston games all looked like attendance was close to 60K (ie, may be 4-5K empty seats in the corners). Nevada and UNLV looked more like 50K and Savannah St. didn't look more than 30k - which makes me fairly certain that the attendance figures rely more on tickets sold than butts in seats.

How does Utah have theirs above capacity?

Fido wrote:
Houston was on a Thursday, Utah State was on the usual Friday, then Virginia, Nevada, UNLV, and Savannah State were all Saturdays.

So it was. Houston Thursday at 7:00, Virginia 1:30 on Saturday, and USU Friday at 8:00. We were ranked 25 going in to Houston, 21/23 going in to Virginia, and 18/19 going in to USU. My memory is only the USU game was full and that was due to the opposing fans showing up.



I think I'm probably thinking of the Houston game being the home opener right after we beat Texas and being surprised at the attendance. Maybe it was Virginia but either way it was a bad year for people in the seats. Maybe they paid but they weren't showing up.



I actually enjoy the Thursday/Friday night games as it frees up Saturday but my kids are getting older so I'll start to have more conflicts.

scott715 wrote:
How does Utah have theirs above capacity?

I saw a note that said: "in 2014 a row of bleachers has been added in the standing room areas on the east, west and north sections of Rice-Eccles Stadium. Forty ADA seats were also added for a total of 790 new seats, bringing the capacity of Rice-Eccles Stadium to 45,807 (from 45,017). There will still be space for standing room behind the new row of bleachers." Then I guess the rest of the tickets are standing room only.



That said, last year was a record attendance year for Utah and they had a great home slate of Idaho St, Fresno St, Washington St, USC, Oregon, and Arizona and managed to go 3-3. 2016 gives them 7 home games: Michigan, Utah State, Cal, Arizona St, Oregon St, UCLA, and Colorado so they may have another good attendance year with Utah St at home to go with Michigan and their Pac-12 games.

These have to be ticket sale numbers because there were some sparse looking games.



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Fido wrote:

How does Utah have theirs above capacity?

I saw a note that said: "in 2014 a row of bleachers has been added in the standing room areas on the east, west and north sections of Rice-Eccles Stadium. Forty ADA seats were also added for a total of 790 new seats, bringing the capacity of Rice-Eccles Stadium to 45,807 (from 45,017). There will still be space for standing room behind the new row of bleachers." Then I guess the rest of the tickets are standing room only.



That said, last year was a record attendance year for Utah and they had a great home slate of Idaho St, Fresno St, Washington St, USC, Oregon, and Arizona and managed to go 3-3. 2016 gives them 7 home games: Michigan, Utah State, Cal, Arizona St, Oregon St, UCLA, and Colorado so they may have another good attendance year with Utah St at home to go with Michigan and their Pac-12 games.

I have friends that have bought Utah tickets for years that never sit in their seats all season. The way their West side is set up people just walk along the concourse and follow the ball without blocking anyone's view.



There's no doubt they use the ticket sales=attendance method. And that includes the many free tickets given away to their Mighty Muss section that go for free. I know I had 2 season tickets last year to the U because I was in grad school and those two seats went empty all 6 games. (As far as I know BYU still gives away a lot of tickets as well to wards and other things. Aren't the student all-sports passes up to like $150 now though?)

This has got to be tickets sold, not butts in seats.

Most sports organizations use tickets distributed. So if they give 1,000 tickets to a local youth group and not one kid shows up, those 1,000 tickets are still factored into the official attendance.