The NFL Is Seriously Concerned With Empty Stadiums

[Eleazar]

The NFL Is Seriously Concerned With Empty Stadiums

By: Ryan Phillips | September 13, 2017


Week 1 of the NFL season had plenty of important stories worth following, but maybe the most entertaining was the mostly empty stadiums in Los Angeles and Santa Clara. Both the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers had sparse crowds for their home openers, and that has not gone unnoticed by the NFL.


Ian Rapoport ✔ @RapSheet
NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart on the attendance in LA & SF: “Any time we empty seats that something we want to address.” Focused on sellouts.
10:29 AM - Sep 13, 2017


Ian Rapoport’s report (try and say that fast five times) above shows that the league is clearly worried about the optics of half-filled stadiums. And they should be. It’s embarrassing for the league.

This is what the 49ers crowd looked like at the start of the second half in Week 1:



And here’s what the Rams crowd looked like in the first quarter:



Here’s the thing, the NFL’s plans for relocating teams have been hilariously ham-fisted. Moving the 49ers to Santa Clara, 45 minutes from San Francisco was a moronic decision. Levi’s Stadium is also positioned so roughly 70 percent of the stadium bakes in the sun with no chance of shade.

Meanwhile, the Rams might actually have decent attendance once they move into their new stadium, but that’s a huge gamble. Until then, they’ll likely be dealing with sparse crowds at the Coliseum for the next three seasons. It’s terrible optics for the NFL to have empty stadiums and absolutely no atmosphere for games.

And we haven’t even gotten to the Los Angeles Chargers, who haven’t even been able to sellout a 27,000-seat stadium. No one wanted the Chargers in Los Angeles, and it has shown so far. Dean Spanos and his family have consistently claimed they are pleased with ticket sales and “excited” about what’s happened with the franchise in LA, but look at the following picture for the team’s first ever official game in Los Angeles:



That was taken just before publishing this piece. Everything in color there is a ticket on sale for the team’s Week 2 matchup with the Miami Dolphins. Many of them are “re-sale” tickets that were likely snagged up by brokers when season tickets went on sale. Those brokers will likely aim to sell those seats to opposing fans all season. That graphic is stunning because it comes from just one ticket selling website, and there are several others that each have hundreds of tickets available.

The fact that the Chargers can’t find 27,000 fans to fill their tiny soccer stadium home for their opener in a new city would be shocking if you hadn’t followed this move from the beginning. But, let’s be real: there is zero buzz around the team, fan outreach efforts have been widely mocked and San Diego fans have abandoned the franchise en masse after the way the team’s ownership treated its former city. No matter how much lipstick the NFL tries to put on that situation, it’s always going to look like a pig.

Empty stadiums are a huge deal to the NFL. Yes, the league makes its money off of TV contracts, but when fans aren’t at games it has a detrimental impact on the product. It sends the message that games are boring, uninteresting and that people don’t want to have anything to do with them in person. That kind of message hurts the product as a whole.

Not to mention, players don’t want to play in empty stadiums, so those franchises will suffer when it comes time to lure free agents. That could lead to some teams being buried at the bottom of the league year after year and creating a cycle that leaves fans even less incentive to show up.

This is a major problem for the NFL. Maybe owners around the league will finally realize that their big, bold stadium and relocation plans should actually have more thought attached to them.


http://thebiglead.com/2017/09/13/the...mpty-stadiums/

[3rd&Long]

Originally Posted by Bewbies

Here in ATL they didn't even sell single game tickets. You wanted to go to games you had to buy a seat license and then pay for the whole season.

Never mind that our new soccer team (best attendance in the MLS over 45k a game) plays in there and you can get cheap seats without license.

Sunday games in that new dome are gonna have a lame ass environment because nobody in there is actually the Joe 6 pack die hard fan. Those folks all told the Falcons to piss off.

AND, I'm told, the Falcons coughed up an additional $700 Million for a roof they can't or don't want to open in fear of not being able to close it again. Arthur Blank must be feeling that one deep in the sphincter.

[Mile High Mania]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Yeah, I agree with Cochise's big picture summary, but I do think the true catalyst is price. It's expensive enough now that you could go spend a weekend at a lake or something instead if you have a family. Or for a two-person family like mine, it would cover my airfare to some nice place. It's just not really worth it for a three-hour excursion where your team may or may not win, especially when you can also watch it on your big-screen high-definition television.

If they lower the prices, they'll get a lot of their crowds back, despite the other structural issues going on.

My kids wanted me to take them all to the game this weekend... this conversation happened about 9 months ago. I said, let's say we drive from Dallas to Denver - no airfare. And, we don't want terrible seats, but "ok" seats. Let's price it out.

All in on hotel for 3 nights, gas, food, game, extras along the way... I said, what if I just gave the three of you $250 each and we call it even.

It's just too much money to take a family to a game.

[Just Passin' By]

Originally Posted by Halfcan

All of this. I would also add the tailgate experience is not even close to what it was. The Chiefs try to cram you into a little spot now for "safety" reasons and send the Nazi's around in a golf cart to harass you if you are over the line. It also takes twice as long to get Into the stadium with all the security-which cuts down your tailgate time on noon games.

Tailgating was half the fun of the game day experience- now you almost spend more time being directed around the lot than party time.

Unless it's folded in with another special event (concert, for example), I doubt I'll ever bother going to a live game again. I was offered "free" tickets. I added up what "free' would mean for one person, assuming they kept it on the cheap,

$60 for parking
$20 (lowballed) for 2 beers and a small food item
$10-$15 for gas
3 hours lost time in traffic
Harassment policy a/k/a security measures just to get into the place


So, I can spend $90+, and my wasted time, on "free" tickets, or I can just stay home and either watch on a big screen television or do something else with my time. To me, it's a no brainer, and season ticket holders are insane for spending full amount of money required on what has become both an inferior viewing experience and an inferior overall product experience.

[Rasputin]

To be fair Chargers never had more than a couple of dozen fans in the stands before moving out of San Diego.

[RealSNR]

Tear down the Santa Clara stadium. You could cover the price of airfare, a nice hotel, and decent seats at Levi's Stadium, and I STILL wouldn't accept that offer.

Nothing like being baked alive.

[Halfcan]

Originally Posted by Just Passin' By

Unless it's folded in with another special event (concert, for example), I doubt I'll ever bother going to a live game again. I was offered "free" tickets. I added up what "free' would mean for one person, assuming they kept it on the cheap,

$60 for parking
$20 (lowballed) for 2 beers and a small food item
$10-$15 for gas
3 hours lost time in traffic
Harassment policy a/k/a security measures just to get into the place


So, I can spend $90+, and my wasted time, on "free" tickets, or I can just stay home and either watch on a big screen television or do something else with my time. To me, it's a no brainer, and season ticket holders are insane for spending full amount of money required on what has become both an inferior viewing experience and an inferior overall product experience.

This. I could have had free tickets to the last preseason game. 4 tickets lower level. It would have been great watching Mahomes- but would have still been very expensive to see a game that does not even count.

[3rd&Long]

Originally Posted by Mile High Mania

My kids wanted me to take them all to the game this weekend... this conversation happened about 9 months ago. I said, let's say we drive from Dallas to Denver - no airfare. And, we don't want terrible seats, but "ok" seats. Let's price it out.

All in on hotel for 3 nights, gas, food, game, extras along the way... I said, what if I just gave the three of you $250 each and we call it even.

It's just too much money to take a family to a game.

I'm with you. There's little doubt that the trade off between a HD big screen in the home with surroundsound vs those price points is nudging up on the impossibility scale of rational thought. The in-game experience is unique, no doubt, but the cost line now favors the in-home version, at least to me. I think if every seat had a gambling portal approved for in-stadium viewing, i.e., betting on individual plays/outcomes against posted odds, the rush would be back on but I can't see the NFL going in that direction.

[Dayze]

the NFL is largely unwatchable for me anymore.

Hours and hours of commercials,
Networks pushing whatever the latest narrative is,
Every big play there's always that 2 to 3 second pause where you wait for a penalty flag. No idea what is, or is not a catch anymore.
No idea what Pass Interference is.
Selective holding enforcement.
Preferred treatment of star players.
The "2 minute warning" (which sits high atop my list of Irrational Hatred).
Officiating crews blowing calls, or being the cause for outcomes of games but never getting anything other than a 'sorry, that was the incorrect call' after the fact.

it's just......boring by in large.
Not baseball boring, but pretty boring.

I can sit and watch a college game between two rivalry teams or a big match up between ranked teams, and have 100 times the enjoyment despite not having a dog in the fight with either team.

[Chief Pagan]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

No doubt about it. Los Angeles is a weird animal when it comes to pro football. I understand the league obsessing about it since it's the second-largest national market. It seems like you could fill a stadium from a population of 13 million or whatever it is. But maybe you just can't.

I get that they are playing in crappy stadiums but this is the enthusiasm that LA has after how many years without a pro team?

Wow.

[Chief Pagan]

Originally Posted by RealSNR

Tear down the Santa Clara stadium. You could cover the price of airfare, a nice hotel, and decent seats at Levi's Stadium, and I STILL wouldn't accept that offer.

Nothing like being baked alive.

Is the stadium really any hotter than most stadiums at the beginning of the season?

[gblowfish]

They just want the stadium to look good on TV with a full crowd. That's it. It pissed me off when the Chiefs dump tickets, and guys can buy single game tickets for much less than I have to pay as a STH. And it really pisses me off to pay full price for pre-season. That's just outright robbery, and they don't care. Our pre-season games had woeful attendance this year.

[BigBeauford]

Also a lot of Millenials are no longer playing football and/or don't give a shit about football.

[Otter]

Originally Posted by Cochise

The article mainly concerns itself with California teams that have little or no fan support (redundant, I know), and all three of those mentioned have recently relocated.

However, across the league I think the main problems are that the NFL has decided to price regular people out of the market, and that the quality of the product has declined.

Rule changes making the league so QB-centric... 4 or 5 teams realistically have a chance. You can't hit anyone, you can't defend anyone, nobody knows what a catch is any longer. Defense and the ground game are sideshows the passing game. Arena football isn't popular and this mess the NFL is declining toward isn't either. Bring back the run game, bring back defense, bring back what was once the most "team" of all team sports.

Then maybe people will consider paying exorbitant sums for parking spaces, tickets, and everything that goes with them.

I'll add to this:

• Emasculation of the NFL...players sitting during national anthem, ESPN transitioning into Jerry Spriniger and making gladiators wear hot pink
• Can we make it through 3 plays without the zebras calling a penalty?

The NFL is on the decline and it's their own fault.

[Reerun_KC]

Originally Posted by OldSchool

I think the worst thing that the NFL did was ever acknowledging any political BS. Think that brought a sour note to the NFL and is also pushing a significant amount of people (mainly SJW millennial/college age types) away from the NFL.

Yes this.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by Modser

I'd like to know how they formulate numbers on viewership. Is it a Nielsen type thing where they check in on who and how many people are watching a live event on their on TVs, and do they account for viewers that stream or DVR games to watch at a later date?

Nielsen Ratings, DVR and streaming (the legal kind, not illegal).