Attendence vs Enrollment

GTLiebs said:
Hmm didn't know that. What I've always heard is that generally in the last couple decades (maybe more, just spitballing), there have been more UGA fans in Atlanta than Georgia Tech fans.
Click to expand...


Your statement does not preclude the prior statement of prior to Falcons, Tech was a hot ticket. There are a whole bunch of non-UGAg and non-Tech people living in Atl. Prior to the Falcons, they could watch GT in their own town, or drive to the cesspool and watch a game. Also, once the Falcons arrived in town, there was a cost issue -- not everyone can afford season tickets to both Tech and Falcons, so people had to make a choice, and I bet there are a few Tech alumni out there which made the choice of pro ball (Traitors!! (TIC) ) that before had season tix to Jackets.
 
Consider these same stats for Florida...
Undergrads: 35.898
The Swamp capacity: 88,548 (I assume they fill it most games)

That's only a ratio of 2.47. Even if Florida decided to play games in the biggest stadium in the world (May Day in Pyongyang, PRK) which seats 150,000 they would have a ratio of 4.18.

On the flip side, the best ratio I can think of is Rice University in Houston.
Undergrads: 3102
Attendance: 20179
For a ratio of 6.51

In conclusion, these calculations mean nothing. I don't think they say anything about anyone's football program.
 
BuzzCzar said:
yeah, since the SCHOOLs mission is really athletics and not education, this would be a great idea

worse than having fewer fans there are having fans there that dont care about what is going on, that is much worse IMO
Click to expand...

OMG! Dude, go find yourself a sense of humor. Jeez!! :ugh:
 
Dang I wrote a long reply and lost it.

Anyway, to the one poster, Tech football was the hottest ticket in Atlanta and during some periods maybe the southeast. During different periods, we had the biggest stadium in the south and economically it made sense to play a lot of games there.

When the Falcons, Braves and Hawks came in the 1960's, things changed. It could be argued that leaving the SEC changed things too, but I don't think that was the major issue for many years. We continued to play Tenn, UGA, Auburn, Alabama and Clemson at home and sold out those games until we had to drop many for the ACC.

But our base attendance and walk up sales from Atlanta had taken a big hit.

My Dad (a ND fan as a kid in Indiana), who sent 5 kids to Tech and loved the school and football program, never bought Tech season tickets. He bought Falcons and Braves tickets though. Without pro sports, I feel he would have been a supporter at Tech.

Look around the country, virtually no college does well, numbers wise, when competing with the pros in their city.
 
midatlantech said:
Look around the country, virtually no college does well, numbers wise, when competing with the pros in their city.
Click to expand...

I wonder how true that is. It's something I hear all of the time. Anyone know of any articles/studies that show any correlation. The only exception that comes to mind right away is Miami.
 
turbanicusgt said:
I wonder how true that is. It's something I hear all of the time. Anyone know of any articles/studies that show any correlation. The only exception that comes to mind right away is Miami.
Click to expand...

Miami has absolutely horrible attendance.
 
BHP12345 said:
Miami has absolutely horrible attendance.
Click to expand...

I didn't realize that until I looked at the 2008 attendance stats. Apparently they only fill 60% of the stadium.

I tried to find a correlation between big market teams competing with multiple professional teams and lower attendance. I identified 23 such teams and then subsequently removed USC and UCLA from this list because they do not compete with an NFL team. (Though, their omission did not change the overall stats much) I found that in big markets with competition, school had an average of 73% capacity filled on game day. (74% if you include the 2 LA teams) Teams not in big markets with competition (the other 96 teams) had an average of 82% capacity filled on game day. These numbers do seem to show some correlation between schools that compete with professional sports.
 
turbanicusgt said:
I didn't realize that until I looked at the 2008 attendance stats. Apparently they only fill 60% of the stadium.

I tried to find a correlation between big market teams competing with multiple professional teams and lower attendance. I identified 23 such teams and then subsequently removed USC and UCLA from this list because they do not compete with an NFL team. (Though, their omission did not change the overall stats much) I found that in big markets with competition, school had an average of 73% capacity filled on game day. (74% if you include the 2 LA teams) Teams not in big markets with competition (the other 96 teams) had an average of 82% capacity filled on game day. These numbers do seem to show some correlation between schools that compete with professional sports.
Click to expand...

Good stuff, but gosh, let's take a bit further. Instead of looking at % filled, look at attendance numbers:

GT (one of the best competitors with the pros. Edit: Oops not that good with crummy 2007 schedule.)
Miami
SMU
Minnesota
Washington (edited: #1)
Pittsburgh
Boston College
California (edited: #2)
Stanford
Houston
Tulane
Northwestern
USF
Maryland


Almost every example of these mostly BCS schools shows a smaller fan base than their conference counterparts. Big state rural schools that are not in a NFL city, have much higher attendance.
 
Cheer UP! Stanford went from 90,000 seat stadium and now is averaging 38,000 fans a game. I'd have to say they got hammered much worse than we did!
 
On the capacity issue, Many schools averaged over 100% capacity last year. U[sic]GA averaged right at 100%. This could be scewed based on how they come up with their capacity number, who knows. We averaged like 86% capacity. If we have a run of success like they've had, I'd bet we'll be darn near capacity. You certainly can't take these figures too literal, there's a ton of factors at play. But I think it shows that their isn't a ton of difference between the fan bases of schools like us and the big state schools.
 
BerryGT said:
Not sure if this was observed on here at the end of last season. I found it interesting.

Tech /
12,744 (Fall 08 Undergrads)
47,489 (08 Avg FB Attendence)
FB attendence is 3.73 times undergrad enrollment

UGA /
25,163 (Fall 08 Undergrads)
92,746 (08 Avg FB Attendence)
FB attendence is 3.69 times undergrad enrollment
Click to expand...

As much as I hate to admit it, those numbers are somewhat misleading. UGA's games were all sellouts, so the number doesn't represent the actual number of people who would have gone if tickets were available. We have a lot of catching up to do.
 
Ugay percentages may be smaller, however they still sell all their student tickets. If they made more available they would certainly sell them all, but Ugay makes a hell of alot more money selling to season ticket holders, thus they have fewer student tix available. The bottom line is more money for the AA and all tickets are sold.
 
I don't think anyone is trying to say that GT is on par with UGA when it comes to product demand. The point is that our stadium size is comparable to UGA when you compare to size of enrollment. For those UGAg idiots that reply to everything with "Hey! my stadium could kick your stadium's ass".
 
I'm sure this has been mentioned already, but I'm not reading the whole thread. Sue me.


But, to be fair, UGA probably would have sold out a 100k+ stadium last year. Their ratio is capped.
 
We will not approach capacity with Jax State, Gardner-Webb and Dook all on the home schedule the same year. That's 43% of the home schedule (last year, it would be 50% most years) that are just not competitive teams. That one actually gave us a game is a result of random chance not scheduling genius.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top