Fastest shrinking fan bases

These things are largely useless without knowing a baseline and trends. I imagine fanbases do contract when a team isn't winning. Stopping at the Starbucks in Spanish Fort when I'd drive between Austin and Gainesville between 2010 and 2015 and noticing the ever changing ratio of Auburn to Alabama gear made that obvious.

I've got some problems with the methodology though, and it isn't because there are only 6,330 people. That would be fine in a truly random sample of all football fans for some questions, but given the number of schools for which one can be a fan and the different demographics and psychographics involved, projecting that out to actual numbers of fans lost or gained nationwide is a bit dubious in my mind. There are 144 BCS Division teams, so depending on the way choices were offered and your faith in the central limit theorem, I don't know how interesting this is beyond talking smack on a message board. I'd find a panel of the same people who claimed to be Gator fans at one time tracked year to year to be more interesting.

This alone should tell anyone how fickle this all is:

Deion Sanders Hiring Causes Huge Spike in Colorado Merch Sales

 

Talk about a small sample size ..

 

It helps, but there are still a lot of people like myself who are not nearly as interested anymore due to what I mentioned.

 

I liked having good games as well. I wish we played ten sec games every year.

 

I was at that game and there were several of us getting a good chuckle at them rushing the field. Good grief chumps.

 

Reminds me of an article someone pushed on healthcare systems, saying how Cuba, China etc. were the best because they’re affordable.
But they have no bandaids.
Just finding essentially irrelevant data to write a worthless story.

 

Pelled? I don't recall Charlie hanging with hookers.

 

Doubt he's ever been there...

 

It would be nice if he had any players left for all those ticketholders to see...

 

The Gators have plenty to cheer for in all sports.

 

Which game are you referring to with a lot of empty seats last year? The sold-out Utah non-conference opening game? Maybe the sold-out Kentucky game? How about the sold-out LSU game or the sold-out USCe game? In fact, every game except one last year (leftover McElwain alma-mater Eastern Washington) was at least filled to within 100 seats of capacity in an 88,548 seat stadium. Average attendance was 87,180 last year, and all that for a 6-7 rebuilding product. Were you maybe thinking of another stadium somewhere? Attendance was good here.

 

He wasn’t at any games - I’d bet on it

 

Attendance is not the same as Ticket sales....but yeah except for the gimme game attendance was good in 2022. If things get tough this year I'll be interested in what the actual attendance looks like.

 

2022 Football Cumulative Statistics - Florida Gators

True, but these stats are quoted as "attendance."

 

You are aware that they count everyone in the stadium including the players, press and the hot-dog vendors as attendees, right? Attendance numbers by any university should always be taken with a grain of salt. But in the case of 2022, I agree that we didn't have an attendance problem with the exception of 1 game.

 

Yep, that's true, or else there would never be "standing room only" numbers above capacity published. But, at the same time, everyone else measures attendance in the same way, so, it's apples against apples. To be honest, I never care when attendance is actually down anyway; it leaves more room to spread out in the stands for those of us who do attend every game.

 

The home schedule is pretty dismal. I’m interested only in Tenn, arky, and FSU. The rest are not interesting games. They could schedule some better games for sure. I get it that we have a tough road schedule and Baton Rouge is closer to me, maybe I’ll make that trip this year if it looks like we possibly have a shot. I won’t be there for Vandy or Missouri and definitely not the farce cupcake games.

 

It's all a load of bs if we're good we'll fill the stadum for essentially every SEC game. If we're not then more people will stay home for the non big games. This year isn't exactly looking great and we see the result. With that being said if they wanna increase attendance work with the damn hotels for a reasonable 1 night price. A 2 night minimum plus some insane fee for an average hotel keeps people from going no matter how many cheap ticket deals you hand out. Or work with a bus company and market an up and back package from the big feeder cities (Tampa, Orlando, Jax, etc).

 

Nailed it. Spending the night in town immediately becomes 2 nights in a hotel and by the time you check out that’s at least $500 — or more. Just for the room.

 

Great point about the hotels. We actually stay in Ocala because we have no desire to stay 2 nights in Gainesville or to pay $300 per night, for that matter. Adds some driving for us, but, overall it's still better.