re: College football attendance at games is surprisingly weak - WSJ

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We're going to see football attendance decline in both the NFL and college for the next 20 years or so.

The fact of the matter is that going to a game just isn't that much fun. It's expensive, crowded, stressful, you have to deal with traffic, drunk idiots, and potentially poor weather. The view of the game sucks compared to what you get on the TV. Sometimes you can't even tell what's going on on the field. Ever been at a game and a penalty happens but you don't even know what the call was? Well, if you were watching on TV you'd know. And with watching on TV you can pause the game, go to a clean bathroom with no lines, eat reasonably priced food that you purchased at the store, keep up with other games at the same time, etc. etc.

I know I'll get a bunch of anecdotal responses saying how you enjoy going to games, but the statistics don't pan out and will continue to prove me right.

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I agree with all of this, though it probably won't decline to the apocalyptic levels you're thinking it will.

Schools and pro teams will have to lower food and ticket prices to attract fans back. A game is still a nice social experience, but there are way too many negatives.

I think the big time programs in College with a huge alumni base (Aggies, LSU, UGA, Mich, PSU, OSU, etc) will tend to fare a whole lot better than most. Though, I'd bet that they only reach 90K+ on the marquee games and average around 70 on the shite games.

NFL teams will start to max out on attendance around 55k IMO. Maybe less.

Both make the majority of money through merchandise and TV rights anyway.