Attendance

[SkinsFan_07]

I don’t see any threads on this. If I missed it somewhere else I apologize. I took a look at attendance at week one NFL games and noticed that other than the Packers - Saints game in Jacksonville, we had the worst attendance overall and by far based on percentage of seats on our stadium filled.
 

Out of the 15 games played this weekend, five had 100 percent attendance. Eight games had percentages of 86-99, with only Cincinnati in the 80’s. The last two was the Saints playing GB in Jacksonville which drew 36k, which 52 percent of capacity of the stadium, and Washington drawing 53,000, which is 64 percent of the capacity at Fed Ex. Also, to add insult to injury, the Chargers had a lot of fans there. 
 

The reason I post this is where is our fans? Did the name change really lose us a sizable chunk of fans? We just won our division last year, and the expectations are very high this year. Why would only 40-45k Washington fans show up for our home opener? I find this very concerning. But the press isn’t even covering it. In fact JP Finlay (who I like) even went as far as to compliment the fans today. 
 

if low attendance was a trend across the league then that would be one thing, but it wasn’t. In fact quite the opposite. Teams who often draw low numbers saw high numbers this weekend. 
 

Thoughts? 
 

 

[skinsmarydu]

I was actually a little stunned that I saw so many tons of OUR fans in OUR stadium yesterday.  It made me proud.

[bakedtater1]

From what I understand there's not enough entertainment inside that Stadium to entertain people while they're there getting entertained by the football game...and well, quite frankly, the team in Washington ain't that entertaining. 

[CjSuAvE22]

I was at the game, but we are suppose to be pumped up after a 7-9 season? I dont think so. The stadium will be more packed if we can actually start to win more games than we lose.

[TMK9973]

This is the reckoning.

My generation (I'm 48) is the last generation experience the Glory Years in it's entirety.

And at 48, the idea of fighting traffic, putting up with Drunk aholes, overpriced and below avg food and drink with no entertainment vs watching at home or a local sports bar isnt there.

Yet I still go to 25-30 Nats games a year despite WFT being my true love.

 

Most stadiums now are either in a entertainment district (and people go early and stay late), or the stadium itselfs offers something (Giants stadium for instance has a area where you can try your luck kicking FGs, sit in a cool area and watch pregame projected in big screen, kids have a little football obstacle course).

 

The entire experience around going to a game is terrible.

 

Fans will come to a big game, but short of that.

 

Can't do much about it now. What they should do ASAP is allow people to pack and bring their own food in (like the Nationals). It would be cheaper to go AND they prob would still make the same since those that didn't would have shorter lines and might go more often to buy food.

[Howie411]

DC is very much a Fairweather Fan City.   If the team starts winning you can bet that ticket prices will sky rocket and the stadium will be packed.  Until that happens nothing will change with attendance.  Just wait till the Dallas game, will be 70% Dallas fans.

[Catatonic]

Putting a winning team on the field cures this. 

[BatteredFanSyndrome]

1 hour ago, Howie411 said:

DC is very much a Fairweather Fan City.   If the team starts winning you can bet that ticket prices will sky rocket and the stadium will be packed.  Until that happens nothing will change with attendance.  Just wait till the Dallas game, will be 70% Dallas fans.

I'm sure that makes Dan feel a lot better to look at it that way.

 

But there were times, not even that long ago, where an at best middling Washington team - was packing the house.  Eventually folks get sick of the BS, and you'd be correct in that it will require the team to start winning to get the people back.

[hail2skins]

4 hours ago, skinsmarydu said:

I was actually a little stunned that I saw so many tons of OUR fans in OUR stadium yesterday.  It made me proud.

That is actually quite the rose-colored glasses view of the situation.

 

I was curious all off-season about what the situation was going to be like.  On the one hand, the Chargers are probably going to be our least in-demand game this season from an opposing fans standpoint. On the other, you have an opening day after a season where fans couldn't attend because of covid, which itself is still an issue, but one I think was a negligible factor on attendance yesterday. And the team itself, yeah, with the division titie and playoff appearance last season, but with the below .500 record.

 

When I turned on the game and saw the empty club level and probably half-empty upper level throughout the game, I was like "yup." And then right after the game, looking at the box score to see what the official number was going to be. Less than 53K! At least they are being transparent. That was jarring.

 

The issue is not new. FedEx was packed for the Gibbs 2 years, but after the Zorn debacle is when they started to tear seats out of the upper deck, pretty much eviscerating he whole "tens of thousands long waiting list" myth.  The last season I went to games at the stadium was 2018. That was the season that Snyder brought in Brian Lafemina, who was going to provide the "fresh look" at the issue, and one of the quivers in his arrow was for the team not to make directly available tickets on the secondary market, thus driving up prices on Stubhub. The Skins started out the season with a convincing road win over the Cards, and came home to face, like yesterday, a relatively low demand opponent in Indy. Sat in the club level on a beautiful day and the lack of fans at the game was eye-opening, like 61K announced, and generated good discussion on here. The last game I went to was the game against the Texans where Alex's leg got broken. We were 6-2 at the time and it was one of the few games out of the 100 plus I attended at the place that I sat in the 200s. Very good old school vibe down there, but, like yesterday, the club and upper level was empty. Needless to say, Mr Lafemina was dismissed after the season.

 

I miss Mark The Homer's take on what he thinks the team's business office strategy is here. I looked at the prices on Stubhub before the game and I thought they were higher (with the fees and all) from what I was expecting. In the age of the quality of TVs that are available, people don't want to pay $60 to sit in the upper deck anymore. In the lowers, Snyder's greed of adding the dream seats in 2004 made the 100 level a "stand all game" experience, which isn't appealing. And I don't know what is going on in the club level anymore.  Unless someone likes to light their money on fire, there is no reason at all to pay the prices the Skins are asking for those seats.  I don't think there are many people who have season club seats anymore, and I don't think the team is selling them on the secondary market either.

 

I think people have always gotten too much in arms about the process of getting into and out of the stadium. The stories of it "taking two hours to exit the stadium grounds" are such BS.  I regularly went to games through 2018, often getting to the stadium an hour early, leaving at the gun, dropping my mother at the New Carrollton train station. After a 1 pm game, I was routinely back in Woodbridge by 6 pm.  I do think the process of finding a parking space, dodging the folks who set their cornhole games in through lanes and chairs and grills in empty spaces, is way more of a chore than it needs to be. Once inside the stadium, watching the game itself isn't a terrible experience, aside from, again, the number of true choice seats is limited to the 200s and the too-expensive 300s. But the music sucks. The lack of replays shown sucks. PA announcer Mark Kessler sucks. The new dance team probably sucks. Etcetera. Someone earlier mentioned MetLife Stadium has an area where kids can play in a football themed area. FedEx had that at the beginning, before Snyder took it out for more corporate hospitality BS.

 

I agree that winning will boost attendance to some degree, but its going to take a whole lot of it, and I doubt, aside from the Cowboys games or deep playoff runs, we ever see healthy attendance numbers at FedEx again.

[RFK Lives]

Gave up my season tickets in the spring of 2012.  Attending a game at FedEx was an absolute chore back then and I can't imagine it has improved in the last 10 years.

 

Me and my friends joke and call FedEx a toilet and after yesterday's fan experience, it appears it really might be.  We are Oakland East.  Older stadiums like Arrowhead seem to be able to keep things up to date and keep the fans coming even before Mahomes but their fanbase is likely less jaded than ours.

 

Yes, winning can and will likely cure the ills but if that doesn't happen soon, you will likely see numbers dwindle until a new stadium in 2027.  

[88Comrade2000]

It will be worse the next game. Unless Taylor goes on a tear, attendance will be horrible for us this year.

[RFK Lives]

Here's the thing, I think attendance will be better Thursday, overall, but it will be the Meadowlands South as the Giants fans will take the train south and gobble up cheap tickets.  So, yes, "our" WFT attendance will be worse but I think Dan's overall attendance, the only number he might care about, will be better.  Benefit of having two division foes along I-95.

[abdcskins]

This has been a problem for the last 20 years as far as I can tell.  I live in California, but if I did live in DC I couldn't see myself attending a game, at least not in the team's current state. Overpriced tickets, food, beer, and dealing with traffic/parking is enough to make me want to stay home and enjoy the game from the comfort of my own home. 

 

I have always said that football is the one game I would prefer watching on TV. Unless you have really good seats at the stadium, you are able to follow the game much closer watching on TV with replay and such.

[Renegade7]

Nothing to do with the name change, this was occurring before that.  I want to hear about the sewerage break, that stadium is a dump and sucks having to walk to.  I love my team, they jus find different ways to make it hard to justify going to FedEx field.

[Warhead36]

The team hasn't been great and isn't exciting to watch either but the stadium is just absolute garbage. I mean you literally have crap raining on the fans. Its an embarrassment.

[No Nonsense]

I was really surprised to see so many empty seats. I would have thought after no fans last year, winning the division, high expectations and a young stud in Chase, there would have been a sell out. 
 

 

[Csup]

I gave up my season tickets a decade ago and haven’t gone back.  The entire stadium experience is pretty bad.  And yes, a large reason for that is the poor team performance.  
 

But you shouldn’t be surprised at the low turnout yesterday.   Synder has run this franchise into the ground.  A division championship at 7-9 in a weak NFC East won’t bring back fans.  We’ve seen spurts of winning like that.  Until Washington provides  sustained winning and stability, this will continue to be the norm.  

[skinsmarydu]

Well, I'll be visiting Mercedes Benz (where my very best girlfriend had the lighting job project) for the first time when we're here. 

I've already told her that it's too damn bright, even on TV.  We usually have a decent amount of fans, including one very nice lady that I had to teach to not scream and ring her cowbell when we're on offense.  

 

[Cooleyfan1993]

Got my dad two tickets to yesterday’s game, he invited this new neighbor of theirs along for his first NFL game (he’s from Russia, moved here a couple weeks ago), the guy loved it! Well, minus the team playing awful football. 
 

My dad said he thinks lower level was about a third full, club level a third full and upper bowl half full. (Might have mixed up what he said for club and upper, but that was his estimate, and he’d know since one of his duties back in the day was to estimate how many fans were here back then as well) 

 

but yeah unless this team can win games consistently this season, fans aren’t going to want to come to the stadium, unfortunately 

[dyst]

It’s not the name change and its not COVID. This has been an issue for years. Remember the Steelers game when they outnumbered us. It’s a bad team.

[SkinsFan_07]

The problem is even teams who generally have attendance issues as well filled their stadium for the opener. We didn’t. Here is our season averages over the last decade along with our record that year..,
 

2019 - 65,488 (3-13)

2018 - 61,028 (7-9)

2017 - 75,175 (7-9)

2016 - 78,304 (8-7-1)

2015 - 76,309 (9-7)

2014 - 77,904  (4-12)

2013 - 77,220 (3-13)

2012 - 79, 654  (10-6)

2011 - 76,921  (5-11)

 

Attendance was very steady until 2018, where it took a very large drop, but then went up to 65k in a 3-13 season. Last year of course we couldn’t have a full stadium but we rally to win a bad division and a lot of experts favored us to win division and we have 52k show up? There is more to this then bad football. I think we are seeing that the name change has lost us more fans then anyone wants to admit. That being said, if we come up with a new name that is catchy and we get a new stadium and start winning then can we recapture old fans or gain new ones? Sure! But it’s very interesting though to look at all this and analyze it. I will add I was a fan that almost moved on over name change because the name is why I started following the team. My high school has same name. But I chose to stay with Washington. 

[djpapeleta360]

I went to the game yesterday and first time in a while. This was my frustration from being there. I sat in the 100s section mid field and pretty much I had to stand the entire game since everyone in front of me would stand and blocked my view. 

     Showing replays sucked. When McLaurin made that huge catch we all didn't know he made it and wanted to see a replay. They didn't show the replay of this catch. Didn't see the replay of the huge offsetting penalties with Gibsons face mask.

      Getting refreshments at halftime sucked. Would take at least 30 minutes or longer waiting in line to get something to drink. It was hot yesterday and I didn't see no one walking around seating area selling refreshments. Maybe they were, since I was paying more attention to the game, buy I didn't see them. I waited in line but ended up leaving the line to get back to my seat since I didn't want to miss the action. 

    After leaving the game I told my self I would not come back. I felt exhausted after standing all game, thirty and having to walk 1.5 miles to my car. 

[Springfield]

It was blazingly hot and the team played like crap. The stadium is a dump. It felt like a punishment being there.

[Riggo-toni]

I disagree the we are fairweather/bandwagon fans. There was a huge waiting list when Dannyboy bought the team, and he exploited it to soak every last penny from fans. Washington has the longest active streak of not winning 11 or more games, all the while being charged exorbitant prices for rancid airline peanuts and expired leftover FIFA beer. The generations that experienced the Gibbs years have either died off or like me have moved away, and anyone under 30 has known nothing but crap years as the team has fallen below even the Lions and the Bengals.  At least there was the Browns, but now they are winning.  We have unquestionably the worst owner in the NFL, and therefore little chance the team becomes genuinely competitive in the next few decades. I am addicted to the Skins, but I won't pay a dime in support as long as El Dano owns the team.

[Darrell Green Fan]

It's not the stadium, RFK was not a nice stadium , was in a terrible neighborhood and it was difficult to get in and out of. The old Boston Garden was a dump.  If you win they will show up, if you are an embarrassment for over 20 years this is the result. It's just that simple.  

Edited September 13, 2021 by Darrell Green Fan