What is the state of our fan base?

jacketFan3938

Georgia Tech Fan
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I curious what we think our fan base is looking like these days, and what the potential is. I was really hoping to see us put 40k in Bobby Dodd last night, but honestly it wasn’t even close. I believe it was 32k.

The crowd was still solid and energy was high so this isn’t meant as a negative post. I’m just curious if people think we will return to 45k+ crowds if we continue to progress from here, or if our fan base has genuinely dissipated through the last 5-7 years
 
DiffusedAcorn

DiffusedAcorn

Jolly Good Fellow
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jacketFan3938 said:
I curious what we think our fan base is looking like these days, and what the potential is. I was really hoping to see us put 40k in Bobby Dodd last night, but honestly it wasn’t even close. I believe it was 32k.

The crowd was still solid and energy was high so this isn’t meant as a negative post. I’m just curious if people think we will return to 45k+ crowds if we continue to progress from here, or if our fan base has genuinely dissipated through the last 5-7 years
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I think it's sort of a build it and they will come type of deal. Once we are a consistent bowl team again and have a couple of 8 or 9 win seasons, we'll have some good crowds. Tough to rationalize spending 3 hours on a 3 win team, once that changes it'll be fine I think.
 

yeti92

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Win the bowl game to finish 7-6 and play very well/beat FSU in Ireland to start next year, and the attendance will increase a little bit, but Key is going to have to win 8+ games before the more fairweather fans start returning in bigger numbers.
 
Techster

Techster

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Before the season, half the fanbase thought we'd win 5 or less. The other half thought we'd win 6 or more.

So 100% of our fans should be happy, right? That's how algecalcutrig (i.e. maths) works...

Of course, there's a portion that's probably mad we won more than 5 games, but F those fans they don't count towards algecalcutrig...
 

684Bee

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jacketFan3938 said:
I curious what we think our fan base is looking like these days, and what the potential is. I was really hoping to see us put 40k in Bobby Dodd last night, but honestly it wasn’t even close. I believe it was 32k.

The crowd was still solid and energy was high so this isn’t meant as a negative post. I’m just curious if people think we will return to 45k+ crowds if we continue to progress from here, or if our fan base has genuinely dissipated through the last 5-7 years
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It’s going to be tough going forward, mainly due to demographics of our student body. There’s simply a large chunk of our future alums (potential supporters) that don’t care about it. That’s why I’m glad Batt and Cabrera are doing things to bring in revenue from other sources.
 

JacketOff

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Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever average 45k at BDS again. It’s more likely the stadium gets downsized to hold only 45k than it is we get 45k into the current configuration consistently. We’ll always draw 45-50k plus for games like Clemson, Georgia, Notre Dame, and Florida State with the help of visiting fans. But the games against those kind of second tier teams like UNC, Miami, Louisville, VT, NCSU are the ones I hope can start drawing 40-45k again. The only way we start getting more than 40k in the house for games against the likes of Syracuse, Boston College, Duke, Wake Forest, and any FCS/G5 teams we play is if we start rattling off 8-9+ win seasons consistently.

It will probably also help Tech at least a little bit if/when UGA gets knocked down a notch or two back to their historical normalcy. There are absolutely some “fans” afraid to identify with GT right now because of how our program looks compared to UGA. They’re scared of getting barked at at work or school if they talk about Tech.
 
AUFC

AUFC

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We've seen the hey days of BDS. That doesn't mean it can't get loud - I was at Notre Dame Stadium with almost 80,000 in their seats at kickoff yesterday and it was a morgue compared to BDS against UNC. The reality is our fanbase is very old and dying off. It will be on J Batt to create a BDS experience that millennials and zoomers want to be a part of (a crowd with which we can make humongous attendance gains). A huge number of my friends just stopped paying attention to the football team when we graduated.

Appeal to recent grads and we can get 55,000 in BDS again.
 
Bogey

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BDS is in bad need for a major innovation and I have heard one is being planned which will make it more fan friendly with seat backs, beer garden, etc. To accomplish this it will need to be down sized to 40-45 k. When, and if, such a renovation is completed and our wins return to an acceptable level, I believe we will have no attendance issues regarding filling our stadium with supportive fans.
 
AUFC

AUFC

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Bogey said:
BDS is in bad need for a major innovation and I have heard one is being planned which will make it more fan friendly with seat backs, beer garden, etc. To accomplish this it will need to be down sized to 40-45 k. When, and if, such a renovation is completed and our wins return to an acceptable level, I believe we will have no attendance issues regarding filling our stadium with supportive fans.
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Put awnings in like Hard Rock Stadium to trap in noise and shade fans in September too. The game in Miami this year was sparsely attended and still one of the loudest venues I've been in.
 

GT33

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This year Key arrested the slide in non-mutt game attendance at about 34k, basically level with last year. In total we've lost about 11k fans since the CPJ days or about 25% of our fanbase. It has cost us about $3.5M/yr just in revenue at the gate. Realistically we can probably recover 2-3k per year (5% growth) or reclaim about $1M/yr in seat sales unless we go on a massive winning streak which is unlikely but not impossible. Essentially we're looking at about a 4-5 year recovery just to get to where we used to be mostly dissatisfied at having a 80-90% full stadium. The other alternative is dropping or freezing ticket prices trying to hit a mix where revenue is up but prices are lower in order to get butts in the seats. That's what I'd do as you got a better chance once fans are here of gaining momentum than waiting for Key to rebuild the roster & staff as best he can.

Not a fan of Young Gravy, but it did get a thousand kids or so lined up on North Ave to watch him flop around like a baby giraffe. Getting students back to the games needs to be a high priority. Maybe they need to raffle off scholarships every quarter where you have to be there to win?

I think the block party spot needs to move to the lawn by Student Center and Library because the slice of North Ave is just a poor location. Maybe it's good for the ACC Network crew and gives a good tv backdrop, but as far as assembling a crowd it's lacking. I've long been a a fan of improving the gameday experience. I'd target food, music and tech exhibits. Batt got this much improvement, he just needs to keep working it.

I like the night games and hope we have a larger percentage of them particularly earlier in the season. Not sure what we can do about that other than win.

Redesigning the stadium with more seat backs and party decks will help. We'd lose max attendance, but how many 55k games are we likely to have anytime soon other than the mutts? ND will probably always be at the Benz.
 

swarmer

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699
To build the fanbase you need to convert those in the North Endzone to longerterm season ticket holders. It will take time, but the big home wins will help push the needle in the other direction.
 

swarmer

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699
GT33 said:
Redesigning the stadium with more seat backs and party decks will help. We'd lose max attendance, but how many 55k games are we likely to have anytime soon other than the mutts? ND will probably always be at the Benz.
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For the love of God, please quit farming out our marquee home games seats from BDS. Having ND Clemson or FSU on the docket makes season tickets a lot more appealing. Also, you want to create lasting memories in your stadium to keep fans coming back; I’ll never for the life of me understand why we give our best assets away.
 

MWBATL

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swarmer said:
For the love of God, please quit farming out our marquee home games seats from BDS. Having ND Clemson or FSU on the docket makes season tickets a lot more appealing. Also, you want to create lasting memories in your stadium to keep fans coming back; I’ll never for the life of me understand why we give our best assets away.
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To answer your question….we get more money farming those games out. And games at MBS are included in the season ticket package.

personally, I hate MBS and hate that we don’t have the biggest foes in Bobby Dodd, BUT we broke. We do it for the money.
 
BleedGoldNWhite21

BleedGoldNWhite21

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Winning cures all. You can point to iconic programs that have struggled and still sell out games regularly, but that’s not realistic for our fanbase simply because of the size of the fanbase. People have estimated we’ve lost an average of 11k fans a game since CPJ. You don’t think Nebraska has lost 11k fans for struggling? The difference is their fanbase is way bigger so thousands of fans losing interest when they are struggling does not take the kind of chunk out of attendance as for a team like us. Same can be said for many SEC programs. Unfortunately, we are little brother in our own state and have a much smaller alumni base located in the state. Winning makes a big difference for us.
 
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