With the advent of the National Championship playoff we got the required interest in the Semi-Finals and the national championship game. ESPN reported the largest audience for the final and was glowing in the aftermath of the Ohio State Buckeyes victory. However what is the price we will pay down the road for all this hype? Naturally attendance was up in 2014-2015 because we added another four bowl games. This in itself is good news unless you look a little deeper and check into average attendances over the last three years including this campaign.
Attendance Up and Down during 2014 Bowl Season
Bowl games were down significantly in attendance. Yes more people watched more games, but the average was down approximately 4,000 fans per game. Although I do not know the size of the stadium in the Bahamas, there were nine bowl games who recorded attendances under 30,000. With each school responsible for 8-12,500 tickets, perhaps we should be looking at geography before we start sending the schools too far away and lose the connections. The Rose Bowl did not sellout for the first time in over 30 years and that is a significant occurrence to raise an alarm moving forward. Comparing the big six bowl games from 2013, Peach, Cotton, Orange, Fiesta, Rose and Sugar, only the Sugar and Fiesta bowls had an increase in attendance. Obviously Georgia Tech and Mississippi State do not travel well as there was a 19.2 % decrease in the Orange Bowl, from the Clemson, Ohio State tilt from last year.
Now that we have a playoff how much significance can we attach to an everyday bowl game ? Is this new format the golden goose or just a rotten little egg for us to whip up into a plain jane omelet? The golden goose was the product. The games were entertaining and worthy of watching beyond the casual fan. The rotten omelet was how little hype everything else got over a twenty three day period. There were some terrific matchups this year and the press just didn’t focus enough on any of those positives. Having bowl games after the semi finals seemed pointless. They garnered even less attention, even though the GoDaddy.com Bowl scored more points than any other bowl game this season.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that financially most fans cannot, over Christmas, travel to two venues and support their team. This affected the top four schools immensely. These fans, FSU and Alabama as an example, forego the playoff hoping to travel to the championship game instead. Not going and your team losing puts you in the wringer because now you missed out completely. The decrease in attendance was a subtle 1.7 % at the Cotton Bowl and as poor as the aforementioned Orange Bowl at 19.8%. This will bear watching in the future.
Attendance was a healthy 1,716,871 for an average of 44,022 per game. This is down {8.7%} from an average of 48,215 in 2013 and 48,110 in 2012. Per game this 4,193 per game doesn’t seem like very much, but spread out over 39 games it equals an astounding 163,000 plus fans. As interest continues to wane in light of a championship series, how will the bowl committees drum up significant interest beyond the school’s alumni? Actually 30% of the fans attended seven football games. If you factor in the big six bowl games and the national championship 515,984 fans {average of 73,712} supported seven major games. So following this to its logical conclusion we had an average of 37, 528 attend all other venues. This is a drop of 5,300 fans per game compared to 2013’s non-BCS games.
Bowl games will have to become a little more inventive in how they invite teams, giving consideration to distances teams have to travel and which schools continue to put butts in the seats. It will certainly be interesting to see the long term effects this has on the number of bowl games that survive if the playoffs get even bigger.
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