I found this article on Aug 15th in the Oregonian (Season-ticket sales surging for UO, OSU, PSU football) about the explosion of ticket sales for not only Oregon and Oregon State but also in Portland State football game this year.
According to the article the schools have combined to sale 70,000 season tickets for the 2007 season and a question popped up in my mind: Will this boom hurt the number of fans that go to Linfield games this year?
During 2006 Linfield had an average of over 2,881 fans at home games which was a large drop from the 4,417 fans that overfilled the ‘Catdome during 2005. A few things contributed to this including Linfield being ranked #1 all of 2005 and some home playoff games that brought in big gates. Then you add hosting Menlo (which just kills the avg), terrible weather for Whitworth, and we had a big drop in the numbers for 2006. The night games did not have the desired effect in increasing attendance as the Willamette day game was the biggest attended game for 2006 (3,926) but the night games still drew solid crowds.
There are other factors in why people come to the our games (the weather, the match-up, the quality of the team, etc) but make no mistake that what the large schools do have an impact on the ‘Catdome turnout.
Linfield is always going to have its hard core base of fans that would rather be at the ‘Catdome on Saturday than go to a SuperBowl but after comparing schedules I’m curious if there is an impact at all. Here is Linfield’s home schedule below and who of the large schools will be at home during the same dates.
Home Games:
Sep 15th (HSU)- Portland State, Oregon State, Oregon
Sep 6th (UPS)-Portland State, Oregon State
OCT 20th (PLU)-None
NOV 10th (L&C)-Portland State, Oregon State
So besides the PLU game, the ‘Cats will be competing with the Beavers and Viks all season long. I have no way of measuring this and does it really matter in the grand scheme of the 2007 season? No it doesn't, but I think we all can agree that a ‘Catdome busting at the seams is better than a ‘Catdome filled to the rafters.
3 comments:
I think that this years squad should bring the attendance up at the Catdome. Exciting offense, some great new and old talent and local names that will be in the mix more often. Armstrong, all the Lemons, Lever, Rogers. This should make things fun for the locals.
Interesting take on things WC11...
Will the 'Cats fill a 747 in early December for the trip to Collegeville in the West Region Final??
Why would we be going to C-Ville in December? The only thing happening that time of the year is the local Minnesota YMCA will have Touchdown Tommy working as Santa to earn a cot for the winter.
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