David Hookstead
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Stanford’s football team is apparently pretty desperate to get fans in the stands.
The Cardinal are currently 3-4, and the team has come up with an interesting promo to get fans hooked on Stanford football.
People can now get free tickets to the final two home games against BYU and Washington State to test out potentially locking in season tickets for next year.
“Get free tickets to our final two homes of this season, and lock in those same seats for the entire 2023 home schedule, which features games against Cal, Notre Dame, Oregon and more,” the Cardinal announced.
While it’s an interesting move, it shouldn’t surprise anyone. This past weekend, Stanford Stadium was pretty much empty when the Cardinal played Arizona State. The stadium has a capacity north of 50,000, but only filled a tiny fraction of the seats.
The Cardinal have to do something in order to get butts in the seat, and offering a free trial run is certainly an interesting option.
Will the promo work to get fans to buy into Cardinal football? Time will tell, but something has to change. You simply can’t have your team playing in an empty stadium week after week. It’s terrible optics for the PAC-12 and the university.
A national perusal will show that 80+% of college football programs are seeing more and more “fans disguised as empty seats” … and have been for 3-5 years. Yes, the dozen or so SuperPowers are SRO and another dozen or so (like Camp Randall) have strong traditions.
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The INTEREST in college football is very strong but with 95% of games televised somehow and 60″ flatscreens for $500 …. watching from home is very hard to beat … versus the expense and hassle of “going to the game”. There is a trend to downsize capacity in favor of wider seats with seatbacks and other “spectator comforts” features.
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I would think OUTKICK writers (“fanboys”) would know this ?????
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