"Florida Football: Is reducing capacity in The Swamp a good idea?"

All the hand ringing is quite humorous. The plan is already in motion, this is going to happen.

My concern is if this a multi year renovation, will the team play home games somewhere else or will sections of the stadium be closed off during the season?

 

SS has stated that they will NOT lose any home games. I think they try and portion out construction so they don't lose sections during the season(s)

 

Laugh, but it’s a good way to get their attention and maybe have our concerns at least recognized. Someone here said the administration doesn’t care about winning games. I hope that’s not the case, but if that’s true then they need their bell rung. A demonstration would attract attention, and every college kid loves a good demonstration (especially if it’s peaceful).

Funny - when plans were announced to demolish historic Tiger Stadium in Detroit, people did gather and do the ring around the stadium in protest. Didn’t work of course - but we went to one of the very last games in old Tiger Stadium — we were sitting in the lower level around 1st base and I looked up at the deck above and there were frigging holes in the structural steel. The place was truly a wreck. It was sad to see it go.

SAVE THE SWAMP!

 

That would definitely make it doable. Because you cannot connect the end zones to the sidelines if you just start building random shit.

 

The general plan seems to be go chairback in the lower bowl, only widen seat width in the upper bowl. They will also have to widen the vertical aisles and add railings everywhere to meet code. And of course the bathroom/concession/video board/sound system upgrades that everyone agrees on.
I think the wildcard is primarily how much and where they try and adopt additional "premium/club style" seating. That's where there may be large divergence in opinion and cost

 

I've wondered how UF got away with no restrooms in the upper section of the O'Dome when they remodeled.

 

To me the fun environment around the team and games is what matters. That's also how you get students to become fans, join alumni associations, donate to athletics and the school as a whole, etc...

Alabama wins tons of national championships but you wouldn't catch me dead donating to their athletic program or buying merchandise. If NCs are what matters then why does Michigan have any fans? Notre Dame?

Going to be interesting seeing where college athletics ends up in 20 years when all the current big donors, who had fun running to the porpoise at halftime or tailgating freely without being hassled for jaywalking on a closed street, all die off. Will the international student who attended two quiet home losses to middling SEC teams be inclined to donate $10M for a new football facility?

Find ways to fill a 90,000 seat stadium and find potential future alumni donors rather than look to the short term answer.

 

The trend is to downsize. We followed the trend in adding capacity when Tennessee and Penn State were pushing the numbers back in the early 2000s I believe. Now everyone is looking to downsize as attendance continues to fall for various reasons…all of which we’ve covered. I think we are slightly ahead of the curve on this so it seems a bit uncomfortable, but I think you’ll see the rest of the landscape will follow suit. There has to be a reason to go to the games and the fan experience needs an update.

 

schedule good games and win them

 

That’s the biggest factor, no one is traveling and spending a ton of money to watch mcneese state.

 

Why if we can be more profitable scheduling USF or UCF?

 

Those tickets are much less than the higher profile games. I’m sure the quality of tge schedule would affect future tv deals too. Mcneese state tickets are virtually free and tv isn’t interested. There’s no profit there to speak of. It’s like taking a week off financially to prop up their football program as a favor and pad our record. Kinda bushleague to me.

 

But it’s a one and done and we get all the proceeds after cutting McNeese St a check. I don’t have the numbers, but the fact that most teams continue to do this tells me that it’s still profitable for the home team.

 

I'm not arguing with you, but there's a big difference in announced attendance and actual people in seats, which applies in all sports. Announced attendance is a number that reflects the number of tickets that are sold or distributed in whatever manner. It also typically includes everybody in the stadium (players, coaches, press, workers, etc.) not just fans. You always hear these baseball games on TV with maybe 10K at most in seats announced as 20-25K attendance. That number usually includes give away blocks of tickets to deserving groups and other people to pad their attendance figure There's no regulation to how they report attendance.

For UF and most major schools that have a strong fanbase, announced attendance is always going to be high because we sell a lot of season tickets. We used to sell out 100% of the allotment. For a long time, you couldn't buy individual games tickets to a Gator game, unless they were being resold. As I recall, everybody buying season tickets back then had to pay a pretty sizable "donation" just to have the right to purchase season tickets (much higher than now). Demand was high. About 10-15 years ago, UF stopped selling out season tickets (even with lower "donation" requirements) and started offering an allotment of individual game tickets to the public.

I don't think UF is doing particularly bad, but demand is clearly down and I find it very hard to believe the 98.5% of capacity is accurate. I saw Gator home games that were maybe 60-70% capacity. Entire sections of the stadium were empty. I saw the same at other SEC games. College station stadium looked maybe 60-70% full as I recall. FSU had huge sections of empty seats at their games as well.

I can tell you that last year, UF was selling a ticket package at Costco that if I recall included food and drink at some incredibly low price, and it was valid for UK, USCe and Mizzou games, as well as the cupcake games, if I recall. They had a huge display at our store and I'm sure it wasn't just our store. For a school like UF to have availability to sell a large group of game tickets to Costco for a package deal with food at a huge discount, where Costco can still make a profit, should be pretty telling about the ACTUAL demand for tickets. Just sayin.

But to the point, this isn't just a Gator problem, this is a problem for all of college football. As I mentioned earlier, CBS says that demand has dropped about 15% in the last decade or 2.

 

Those tickets may be essentially free on the after market close to kickoff, but they were purchased at face value from the UAA. Don't kid yourself, the program profits tremendously from those games.

Let's do a little math: Let's assume the UAA collects on average $100 from each fan attending the game; this includes the ticket (at face value), parking, and concessions. Multiply that by 80,000 fans (I'm allowing for no shows and returned visitor section tickets going unsold to be conservative), that's $8 million in gameday revenue. McNeese St is getting paid $500,000 to play UT. That's $7.5 million net before gameday operating expenses, which I'm guessing is in the $1-2 million range. Bottom line: those cupcake games are still very profitable.

Now what's hidden in there is that season ticket holders are drawn to buy those tickets (at face value) so they can also buy the tickets to the better games. That value proposition arguably skews things. But as long as the UF isn't forcing customers to buy too many bad games, they can get away financially with a few cupcakes a year.

 

In figure it out ...Expand the seating to 105k!!! Add a 3rd level but make those all aluminum seats yet give them amazing scoreboards to watch game and misters

Lower 75k all premium type seats

 

Face value are different by which opponent. Those aren’t $100. The entire package at the lowest doner rate was just over $1000 each season. The two to four good games are what sells the entire package. My parents usually go to all the games but have a hard time giving away the fake games. They just turn them back in to the school.

 

"this includes the ticket (at face value), parking, and concessions."

 

Now add up what the profits are when we play real game. The real games are sellouts. Hotel rooms are full everywhere, Although that doesn’t profit the school I guess. The real games are put on TV and paid big money for their rights.. We collect over $50 million per team and the bottom feeders of our conference, and the pansy games, have nothing to do with generating all that money. Adding Oklahoma and Texas in an extra game will generate a ton of money especially if we quit scheduling meaningless games.