2019 SEC home football attendance drops to lowest average since 2001

Josh Vitale | Montgomery Advertiser

Southeastern Conference football is as popular as ever. Five of the 10 most-watched teams in the country in 2019 came from the SEC, with each of those teams — Alabama, LSU, Auburn, Georgia and Florida — bringing in more than 38.5 million television viewers during the regular season.

Two of the three most watched regular-season games were played between league opponents — the Game of the Century II between LSU and Alabama brought in 16.64 million viewers, and the Iron Bowl between Auburn and Alabama brought in 11.43 million. The only other game that measured up was Ohio State-Michigan, which attracted 12.42 million, according to Sports Media Watch. The SEC Championship Game between LSU and Georgia was the most-watched conference title game at 13.7 million.

But the conference’s football stadiums, overall, were not as full in 2019 as they were in 2018. In fact, average SEC home football attendance this season was the lowest it has been in a long time.

The league’s 14 teams combined to play 102 home games in 2019 — a number that includes three neutral-site games between two SEC teams (Florida-Georgia in Jacksonville, Arkansas-Texas A&M in Arlington, Texas, and the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta). Those games brought in a total of 7,418,914 fans. That’s 82,761 fewer fans than 2018 (7,501,675) despite there being two fewer games on the schedule that season (100).

The SEC averaged 72,735 fans in those 102 games in 2019. That’s a decrease of 2,282 from last season, and the conference’s lowest total since 2001, when it averaged 72,130.

The team’s high-water mark during that stretch, 78,274, came during the 2015 campaign. It hasn’t been a constant decline since then — the number dropped to 77,507 in 2016 and 73,571 in 2017, then went back up to 75,017 in 2018 before falling this season.

“Issues related to attendance are not unique to college sports," SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said. "There are challenges that are common across sports, college and professional, such as viewing options through enhanced at-home and mobile technology and a new generation of fans with a changing set of attendance habits."

So, what caused the decrease?

The drop in attendance wasn’t uniform. Half of the league’s 14 schools actually increased their average home attendance from last season to this season.

Missouri made the largest jump, both in terms of percentage of capacity filled and average attendance. The former increased from 73.32% last year to 86.49% this year, though that was in large part due to stadium upgrades that decreased the number of available seats — the latter went up from 51,466 to 54,160.

Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, South Carolina and Texas A&M also saw their attendance numbers go up this season. Georgia actually finished the year averaging a higher attendance (98,817) than there are seats in Sanford Stadium (92,746) thanks to the 500 temporary seats it added for a high-profile early season showdown with Notre Dame.

Six of those teams share something in common — they all finished the regular season .500. South Carolina (4-8) was the only one that didn’t. LSU, Georgia, Florida and Auburn finished as the top four SEC teams in the final College Football Playoff rankings.

Georgia led the conference with seven sellouts. Auburn and Alabama tied for second with four each, South Carolina had three, Florida two and five other teams one.

“We can’t control what happens on the field, but we can control what we do on the video board or different traditions we have that make people want to be there,” said Auburn associate athletic director for external affairs Evin Beck, who has also worked at Georgia and Ole Miss.

“I think the game day experience is a crucial part of getting people to come to the games. So far, we haven’t experienced a dip like a lot of our peers have, but we’re not approaching it like we’re immune to that and assuming that we can just keep doing the same thing and people are just going to keep coming. We’re continuing to be proactive in looking at things we can do to enhance our experience, looking at pricing, looking at premium offerings. We’re trying to be pretty intentional.”

The seven teams that experienced a decrease in attendance were Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Tennessee and Vanderbilt. The Crimson Tide, Wildcats and Volunteers finished with winning records, but the other four were .500 or worse.

Some drops, like the one Alabama experienced, were minor — the Crimson Tide went from averaging 101,562 at Bryant-Denny Stadium to 101,117 this year, though that may just be a factor of having three daytime nonconference kickoffs (two at 11 a.m., which athletic director Greg Byrne railed against) and not hosting the Iron Bowl.

But others were significant. Arkansas suffered the biggest drop. After averaging 61,291 fans at Razorback Stadium and getting 51,438 in the building in its annual game at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock last season, it mustered only 53,759 and 33,961 this season, respectively.

Ole Miss was also down considerably, going from 55,971 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in 2018 to just 48,233 in 2019, which was the lowest home attendance anywhere in the conference outside of Nashville, Tennessee, where Vanderbilt averaged 26,431 fans in its 40,350-seat stadium (down 1,614).

It may not be a coincidence that those are two of the three SEC teams that fired their head coaches following the season. Arkansas replaced Chad Morris (4-18 in less than two seasons) with Georgia offensive line coach Sam Pittman, and Ole Miss traded Matt Luke (15-21 in three seasons) for FAU coach Lane Kiffin.

“It’s probably a combination of things. There are a number of factors you can look at,” Beck said. “If you’re not winning, and you go through some tough years, people are less apt to show up.”

Beck also said that, on the year-end surveys Auburn sends out to season-ticket holders, one of the most important things to fans is kickoff time. The seven teams with increased attendance this season combined to play 13 home games that kicked off at noon ET/11 a.m. CT. The seven teams with decreased attendance combined to play 14.

The SEC's television broadcast partners decide kickoff times.

Did alcohol sales have any effect on attendance?

The SEC changed its alcohol policy during its annual meeting in Destin, Florida, this past May, lifting its long-standing ban on schools selling alcohol in non-premium seating areas of their stadiums.

Seven schools — Arkansas, LSU, Missouri, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt — decided they would sell beer and wine in their stadiums starting in 2019, while the others did not make those items available at concession stands. But it’s not clear whether that attracted more fans to games.

Three of those schools (LSU, Missouri and Texas A&M) saw their attendance go up, while the other four (Arkansas, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Vanderbilt) saw it go down.

The ability to sell alcohol led to a sizable financial windfall, though, at least for one school — LSU senior associate athletic director Robert J. Munson said in a thread posted to Twitter that the athletics department generated more than $2.259 million in net revenue from the sale of more than 280,000 alcoholic beverages during the 2019 season, and that doesn’t include what was sold in premium seating areas.

Is the SEC still the gold standard?

Simply put: Yes. Even at its lowest average attendance in 18 years (72,735), the SEC still led all other Power 5 conferences by a significant margin.

The Big Ten averaged 65,408, the Big 12 55,945, the ACC 48,381 and the Pac-12 47,082.

“I believe the sport industry as a whole is responding well, giving more attention to the fan experience, improving in-venue technology, offering more and different in-game entertainment, creative ticketing strategies and more use of analytics to better understand fan behavior," Sankey said. "I am pleased the SEC continues to lead the nation by a significant margin in football attendance, and our institutions continue to be proactive in making the game experience even better and more appealing for fans.”

Josh Vitale is the Auburn beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. You can follow him on Twitter at @JoshVitale. To reach him by email, click here.