Was curious after the conversation today about being surprised the game isn’t a sellout:
Since the S End zone was bowled in, there have been 15 sellouts. All have occurred in odd numbered years when we play Iowa at home. If the Baylor game were to sell out it’d be the first in an even numbered year in at least 10 years. When you look at the attendance trends over the years, it appears that odd numbered years can generally have a 3000-4000 per game dip in attendance. I’ve noticed secondary market tickets are going for quite a bit more this year even though attendance is down. I assume you have a group of people who are buying season tix for the Iowa game in odd numbered years then dumping the rest of the season on the secondary market.
Probably is something to personal financials playing a part for some attending or not if you can pick up cheap tickets on the secondary market or not. At the end of the day it’s not an excuse but a reality that cost is a factor and that this year isn’t an anomaly from prior trends. You’d hope that the team’s success will push those in the fence to fill the Jack in October and I bet it will be close to full on Saturday.
I had a whole long post breaking this down but it got deleted without a draft getting saved, but its more than just Iowa.
Our sellouts have all come from 6 opponents
UNI, Iowa, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Texas. (which is to say the closest FCS school, the 4 closest FBS schools, and the largest fanbase in the old big 12)
In most of those even years, we have only gotten
one of those (Kansas State) and often late enough in the year that attendance falls off due to weather or us simply being bad.
A sellout saturday would be a rather unique event in being against a more distant opponent with a small fanbase.
For further context, here's all-time past Baylor attendance:
1988: 42,913
1997: 34,404
2001: 44,189
2005: 45,992
2009: 42,253
--10 team big 12--
2012: 54,877
2014: 51,776
--new stadium configuration---
2016: 50,842
2018: 53,860
2020: Covid (13,535)
2022: 58,069 (this was our home big 12 opener after starting 3-0)
Even just being
near a sellout should be seen as a great attendance when you compare to past attendance vs Baylor.