EMPTY SEATS: Empty seats at Cowboy Stadium in Dallas for the UA-Texas A&M game illustrate a dip in college football attendance, a dip covered up at times by widespread inflation of attendance numbers.

The Wall Street Journal has football fans talking. It reports a decline in football game attendance, a decline masked by the practice of colleges to announce inflated game attendance figures, including at the University of Arkansas and Arkansas State University.

The story is behind a pay wall, but David Bazzel noted on Twitter that the article said  UA actual home attendance was 58 percent of the number of tickets scanned. A Journal chart also showed inflated attendance at ASU. A snippet from the article:

Advertisement

When Arkansas hosted No. 21 Auburn, scanned attendance was more than 25,000 lower than announced attendance. Overall last season, Arkansas’s scanned home attendance was 58% of its announced attendance as the Razorbacks went 4-8. Nonetheless, Reynolds Razorback Stadium is reopening Saturday after a $160 million renovation that increased capacity by about 4,000. An Arkansas spokesman declined to comment.

The phenomenon has been noted  and chronicled with photos of stadiums showing many empty seats despite high announced attendance counts.

Deadspin explained how the figres were derived.

Advertisement

The WSJ sent records requests to “nearly 100” public universities with football programs to uncover the actual count of scanned tickets from last year’s football season, then compared those responses with the “official” juiced numbers. With the exception of Navy, every school who reported back exaggerated their paid attendance at least a little bit. The most egregious offender found, by percentage, was Coastal Carolina. The Chanticleers played six games in the newly renovated 15,000-capacity Brooks Stadium in 2017, but only scanned a full-season total of 15,248 tickets last season despite announcing an official season attendance of 89,754.

Is it too much to ask institutions of higher education to give accurate attendance counts? Or at least stop announcing bogus counts? Perhaps it’s time for standing FOI requests on football game attendance.

Be a part of something bigger

As a reader of the Arkansas Times, you know we’re dedicated to bringing you tough, determined, and feisty journalism that holds the powerful accountable. For 50 years, we've been fighting the good fight in Little Rock and beyond – with your support, we can do even more. By becoming a subscriber or donating as little as $1 to our efforts, you'll not only have access to all of our articles, but you'll also be helping us hire more writers to expand our coverage and continue to bring important stories to light. With over 63,000 Facebook followers, 58,000 Twitter followers, 35,000 Arkansas blog followers, and 70,000 daily email blasts, it's clear that our readers value our great journalism. Join us in the fight for truth.

Previous article UCA rape charge ends in probation plea bargain Next article Starting tomorrow, some Arkansans will lose Medicaid due to work requirement