Dozens of empty rows in between the 30s on home side of field

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Stan

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I couldn't believe how empty the home side was today. This is sad.

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It was like this all season? Why did we just start caring today?
 

Those are the outdoor club seats so they may have been there but they have access inside.

I am worried about next years attendance with only 1 worthy game- iowa
 

That’s the outdoor club seat sections. Those sections are half-sold (and WAY overpriced).
 



If today was the worst, then you didn’t look during the second half of the Michigan State game
 

I agree, Mich. State was worst. Perhaps the ticket prices will go down. (Just dreaming). But if the law of supply and demand works, we all should enjoy a savings.
 

Maroon92 said:
Those are the outdoor club seats so they may have been there but they have access inside.

I am worried about next years attendance with only 1 worthy game- iowa
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Considering how Fleck is talking, it sounds like he has no plans for the team to be good next year and that it will be another year of learning. With how high ticket prices, can you really expect casual fans to show up and see the Gophers learn? Who wants to pay big money to see their team get destroyed out in the cold?
 

It was so bad, I heard some Wisconsin fans complain there was no one to heckle.
:)
 




The scholarship seating program, wrecked the Gopher football season ticket fan base. The U denies it but they have never recovered the fans that dropped season tickets. Many of those folks have moved on and will never be back.
 

gopherdudepart2 said:
The scholarship seating program, wrecked the Gopher football fan base. The U denies it but they have never recovered the fans that dropped season tickets.
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Why would you pay to watch this team play when the Vikes are doing their thing in spitting distance from TCF Bank stadium? Be good or be reasonable.
 

The record for the smallest TCF crowd is 38K for last year’s NW game. We may break that record next year.....several times.
 



I certainly expected more folks in the stadium. The extra students (many in red) gave the stadium some energy. The home side second level is a joke. They should get the tarps from the Metrodome outfield and just cover it up. I suspect fewer and fewer of those seats will be sold win the Gophers joins us on the sunny side next year.
 

gopherdudepart2 said:
The scholarship seating program, wrecked the Gopher football season ticket fan base. The U denies it but they have never recovered the fans that dropped season tickets. Many of those folks have moved on and will never be back.
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This is the unfortunate truth.
 



Funny thing with so many no-shows is on StubHub still needed $125/ticket minimum (4 together). I considered not missing my first MN-WI game in a decade, but that made it easy. Not sure who would have bought those.


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Spoofin said:
Funny thing with so many no-shows is on StubHub still needed $125/ticket minimum (4 together). I considered not missing my first MN-WI game in a decade, but that made it easy. Not sure who would have bought those.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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They were selling at that price.
 

We can blame it on Megatongue, but the truth is that the product is why attendance is down. It's not a Kill/Claeys/Fleck thing, the fan base is fickle. The program looked to be on the right track, then kind of stalled out (which is exactly what should happen per Fleck's fake graph of no data, but neither here nor there). People get bored with it, and "hey look, the Twins and T-Wolves are cool again, and the Vikings are winning, and the Wild are getting underway....reroute the bandwagon." I wouldn't be surprised if there were even a few people who opted to stay home and check out number 14 Gopher's Basketball in a top 25 matchup with Alabama this afternoon.

In this market, with all of the options, you have to put out a better product. By "better product," I mean play well and win games. Not necessarily "Greatest Show on Turf," but competent football. A program like Wisconsin, who plays a relatively boring brand but wins at a high level consistently, would kill it here in terms of ticket sales.

Another thing of note, the scoreboard/programming/music and basically the whole atmosphere in general is pretty weak. Maybe that comes with success, but it was a snooze fest in there this year.
 

Heracles said:
We can blame it on Megatongue, but the truth is that the product is why attendance is down. It's not a Kill/Claeys/Fleck thing, the fan base is fickle. The program looked to be on the right track, then kind of stalled out (which is exactly what should happen per Fleck's fake graph of no data, but neither here nor there). People get bored with it, and "hey look, the Twins and T-Wolves are cool again, and the Vikings are winning, and the Wild are getting underway....reroute the bandwagon." I wouldn't be surprised if there were even a few people who opted to stay home and check out number 14 Gopher's Basketball in a top 25 matchup with Alabama this afternoon.

In this market, with all of the options, you have to put out a better product. By "better product," I mean play well and win games. Not necessarily "Greatest Show on Turf," but competent football. A program like Wisconsin, who plays a relatively boring brand but wins at a high level consistently, would kill it here in terms of ticket sales.

Another thing of note, the scoreboard/programming/music and basically the whole atmosphere in general is pretty weak. Maybe that comes with success, but it was a snooze fest in there this year.
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You mean you don't enjoy the thrilling thinly veiled ads of the Gophers corporate sponsors every 2 minutes? BOSTON SCIENTIFIC HEART OF THE GAME! *thump* *thump*
 

GoGophersUMN said:
Considering how Fleck is talking, it sounds like he has no plans for the team to be good next year and that it will be another year of learning. With how high ticket prices, can you really expect casual fans to show up and see the Gophers learn? Who wants to pay big money to see their team get destroyed out in the cold?
Click to expand...

No one wants to do that, but it's the unfortunate reality here. The type of coach Minnesota could land last offseason was going to need at least two years to build a contender. Now, if we had acted sooner on the new AD hire and found a new coach for the 2016 season, that may not have happened. But we kept Claeys and the program continued on a downward spiral, and now we have to pick up the pieces.

All they can do at this point is build toward the 2019 season and hope support doesn't completely dry up, so the hand-wringing over fan support is kind of counter-productive.
 

gopherdudepart2 said:
The scholarship seating program, wrecked the Gopher football season ticket fan base. The U denies it but they have never recovered the fans that dropped season tickets. Many of those folks have moved on and will never be back.
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I was one of them
 

GopherVotary said:
The record for the smallest TCF crowd is 38K for last year’s NW game. We may break that record next year.....several times.
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I was at that game. It was the first time I took my son (then four years old) to a Gopher game. He even mentioned yesterday how cool it was that Goldy spun his head around for him (he loves Goldy). But it was brutally cold that day. I was proud that he made it to the end of the third quarter before asking to leave, and I was not going to force a little kid to sit out there any longer than that.
 

The scholarship seating started to crack the foundation. PJ just ripped up the whole floor. I have only had season tickets since 2012, no reason to stay other than I am a patient person. Attendance will continue to go down for 2 reasons; crappy team and a blow hard person in charge.

Minnesotans do not put up with either very long.
 

Short_Timer said:
The scholarship seating started to crack the foundation. PJ just ripped up the whole floor.
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The foundation was cracking years before Megatongue’s folly. The U hired an outside firm six years ago to help sell football tickets. The scholarship seating just accelerated the collapse.
 

The scholarship seating really took out a portion of the fan base. Gopher football was becoming “cool” again, fans were excited, and the U decided on the same day that Kill was named Big Ten Coach of the Year to announce that season tickets would literally double over the course of 3 years. I am the only remaining ticket holder from my group. The Gophers had a niche of being the best value in town when comparing to the Vikes, Wild, etc, but instead of staying in their niche they decided to put their tickets right on par with those teams.

I’ve thought quite a bit of droppingvnyv tickets and keeping my tailgating spot. Every game I’ve been to i could buy tickets on the steeet for less than $20.
 

Our tailgate experience has surpassed the value of attending the game. Our group got there early, as always, watched the game from the parking lot and left at half without ever going in. Quite simply nothing to see inside. You can talk about supporting the kids but the money we dump into university sports does that. For all the reasons previously stated the program is an utter mess. The talk of getting younger, "worse", next year does not help. More people I know are dropping season tickets, buying $5-10 tickets and sitting where they want. Why do otherwise until demand makes it difficult to do so?

The pictures of empty seats will be same or worse for years to come...
 



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