Good story about college football's continuing attendance issues

[AuricGoldfinger]

In addition to the many issues cited in this article, I also continue to believe we are facing a significant generational decline in interest in live attendance at sporting events. I also think fans are growing increasingly resentful of having to pay big bucks for season ticket packages that include a crappy game or two.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-footb ... ince-1981/

[FayetteDore]

Thank you for posting the article, which correctly cites numerous reasons for attendance declines.

True this: "In some ways, the game doesn't cater to the fan who chooses to attend the game in-person," said Chris Bevilacqua, one of the most respected sports media consultants in the industry.

Surprised to see SEC commish Sankey say this: "It's not just TV. It's not just COVID. We have to rethink our approach on key issues. That's almost a Captain Obvious moment."

It was a major mistake in the 90s when the conferences began allowing TV to halt play for longer and longer commercial breaks. It's easy to see the ridiculousness of these 4-minute timeouts when you're at the game and you see the teams finishing whatever the coaches want to tell them and literally standing around waiting for the time-out clock to run down. The result of that and more frequent play reviews is games sometimes running 4 hours -- or even more with OT.

I enjoy college football in the stadium. I often go by myself if I can't find a friend or relative go go. I only miss games when I have to. But I also like having time to do other things on Saturdays and that's getting harder and harder.

I also hate: early September kickoffs at 11 and late November kickoffs at 7 or 8. TV has been great for college football: it's allowed us to watch practically every game and it has pumped a lot of money to the institutions. But IMHO it's also been deleterious.

[2kidsthere]

Games are TOO LONG. End of discussion.

(I was also thinking about the high gas prices and the run up on flight fares, what that will do for the traveling fans this season…not promising)

[PeteFox]

Without question, the live, in-person attender of football games is the LAST priority of all the stakeholders in the game of college football. And VU, being a small school, is at more risk that the schools that graduate the population of several mid-sized towns every year. They only have to convince a tiny percentage of grads that in-person attendance is fun.

[FayetteDore]

Games are TOO LONG. End of discussion.

There's a simple solution to part of this: let the game proceed at its normal pace during TV commercial breaks and then TV can run quick replays of anything important that happened that the TV audience didn't see. This is how it used to be before TV took complete control of games. And it happened Sunday on the VU-Florida baseball game broadcast, when TV finally joined the VU game in progress after the previous game ran long.

That won't solve the frequent video play-review problem -- but it will solve part of it.

[AuricGoldfinger]

Games are TOO LONG. End of discussion.

This is a tremendous problem that only makes watching at home more attractive, as I can easily flip over to another contest. It's ridiculous that it's taking the sport so long to correct it, and even some of the changes being proposed are just Band-Aids.