(02-13-2018 03:15 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-13-2018 02:48 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Looking at the numbers, it looks like 2010 was the peak year, when FBS averaged 46,632. This year 42,203. That represents a 10.4% decline in 7 years.

The south, as represented by the SEC, was typically behind the curve and probably holding up the numbers for half a dozen years, peaking in 2015 at 78,630, and fell to 75,074, which is still a 4.7% drop from peak. If the SEC follows pattern, just a few years behind, then a big drop is coming for national averages.

More evidence we are probably already past peak.

The 10% is a little misleading. About 3k of that decline can be attributed to the expansion of FBS. 11 of the 130 schools have moved up in that time and they averaged just over 17k last year.

While the 10% decline appears to be affected by the FBS expansion, the 2017 NCAA attendance report shows that eight of the 10 FBS conferences saw a drop in average attendance.

The B1G and MWC were the only conferences whose average did not drop (+76 seats for the average B1G game and +832 for the MWC, as compared to the 2016 season). I note that Purdue saw a monster year-over-year increase with +13,433 more fans per game in 2017 than in 2016. The MWC had some decent individual school increases: Fresno St. (+5,139), Colorado St. (+4,462) and SDSU (+2,058).

The SEC saw its average drop over 2,400 seats per game and the AAC dropped over 2,900 *per game*. It appears that much of this is explained by the fact that Tennessee, Ole Miss, Arkansas, Houston and USF had 2017 average game attendance more than 5K lower than their 2016 numbers.