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Stanford football attendance from 1981 to today - Mick - 10-30-2022

With absolutely nothing better to do and wondering about the decline in football attendance since I was in college and John Elway left The Farm, I tracked the attendance of all home games since 1981 in an attempt to understand the precipitous decline in average home attendance from 70,297 for the five home games in 1981 to 35,684 in 2021, with a fairly (un)healthy number of those fans masquerading as empty seats. I used the data found on wikipedia, which has no data from 1986, and only the UCLA game from 1987. So, here goes:

1) Loss of Elway. And I'll expand that to include the loss of extraordinary offence, which made marginal teams worth watching. Elway, Dils, Plunkett, Benjamin, Lofton, Nelson, etc., when our offense suffered, we lost attendance. Dropped from 70k in 1981 to 57k by 1983.

2) Loss of significant OOC opponents. From Ohio State in 1981 (76k) and Oklahoma in 1983 (63k) to San Diego State (26k) by 1988. There was 53k for Texas in 1985, but the next home game against Texas had just 44k in 2000.

3) Loss of San Jose State. Losing SJSU meant we lost a lot of plain old football fans. I knew a fair number of SJSU football fans (and SCU football fans like myself) who just wanted to watch really great football. There were 70k fans for the 1984 SJSU game...then we skipped 1987 and it dropped to 55k in 1988.  We skipped home SJSU games in 1991, 1995, 2001, 2005 and 2006.  Every year, there were fewer fans; from 58k in 1989 to 47k in 1993 to 34k in 1994. Three games from 07 to '09 brought between 33k and 337k, but as Harbaugh brought back the program, the three games from 2011 to 2013 brought between 40k and 51k, with 50,424 in 2013...the last time that Stanford played SJSU.  Sad.

4) Big Game dropoff.  The Big Game had 84k+ from 1981 to 1991, dropped to 82,500 in 1993, then just 73k in 1995, brief rise back to 85,500 and 81k in 1997 and 1999, then fell to 71k in 2001, then 68k in 2003. The new stadium restricted attendance in 1995, but the 2006 Big Game wasn't a sellout at 49k.

5) The real harbinger wasn't Cal, it was the Southern California school.  The two home games against UCLA and USC drew 144k between the 1981 and 1982 games, then dropped precipitously to 130k in 1983/4, then 114k in 1987/8, then 106k in 1989/90, 87k in 1995/6 and 1997/8 and fluctuated from the high 80ks to low 90ks for the two games, until the better Harbaugh teams pushed it to 101k (full houses in the new stadiums), before settling to 99k in 2015/6, then (dangerously low) to 91k in 2017/8.

6) The arrival of Utah and Colorado didn't increase fortunes much.  Utah's gone from 44,635 in 2014, to 37,244 in 2018 to 26,410 last year. Colorado dropped 15% between 2011 and 2016.

7)  With a few exceptions, the Notre Dame series has shrunk in popularity, from 86,019 in 1989 to 80,300 in 1993, to 75,651 in 1997 to 57980 in 1999 to 51,780 in 2001, to 46,500 in 2003. It has stayed at close to a full house (of ND fans) since the new stadium arrived in 2005.

8) Washington's never been a great draw, even during the Don James era. The high water mark was 1982 with 55,213, then dropped into the 40k range from 1984 (45k) to 1995, then a drop to 31,300 in 2000, then to 27,550 in 2004. it bounced back with the advent of Harbaugh's teams, but dropped precipitously from 44,589 in 2017 to 28,014 in 2021. The other three NorWest schools were never great draws, except for when Orego started to get really good.

9) Alcohol was banned in 1990. Didn't have much of an affect on average attendance, which went from 99k in the two years prior to 97k in the first two years after the ban.

10) Really poor professional football teams have a positive affect on really good college team attendance.  Case study is the hapless Detroit Lions versus the 100k+ every week Michigan Wolverines at the Big House. The Rise of the 49ers had a similar impact. As Elway was departing, Montana's star was rising.

11) Great coaching. Walsh II averaged about 7k/game in his three seasons than in the three seasons immediately after Walsh II.

12) And of course, the ongoing reduction in college football fan bases has impacted Stanford's attendance as well.

Send me an IM if you want the spread sheet with all the games and attendance.

RE: Stanford football attendance from 1981 to today - baymeadows3408 - 10-30-2022

Thank you for taking the time to collect and analyze the numbers. We knew what the trend was but now we have some data. The Big Game in 1997 had the benefit of it being the 100th renewal (and we are coming up on 125 in a few weeks) and in 1999 a Pac-10 championship and Rose Bowl berth were on the line. We had a good team in 2001 but Cal was awful, which probably hurt attendance. And the Notre Dame game in 2001 likely would have had better attendance if it wasn't cold and rainy. But ultimately those blips don't matter because you can see the much larger trend.

I think the ascendance of the 49ers also played a role in the downward trend in Stanford's attendance. When the 49ers were mediocre to awful, following a local college program that was competitive and/or had star power like Elway seemed like a good alternative, even if you weren't a Stanford alum. But then the 49ers got good and Stanford got bad. I don't think there is anyway to prove this hypothesis and I don't think it's the only reason why attendance began to decline in the 1980s and 1990s, but I do think the reversal of fortunes for the 49ers and Stanford had some sort of impact. Now excuse me, I'm going to imagine an alternate universe in which Walsh stayed at Stanford and coached Elway and Stanford became a college football juggernaut...

RE: Stanford football attendance from 1981 to today - Alvin - 10-30-2022

Thank you for the data. I've been wondering too what's causing the attendance drop that predates the Covid lockdown and vaccine/PCR years. This is also a national trend but has impacted the California schools more than other regions. In addition to what's been said above and in no particular order, I can think of the following reasons for the decline: 

1) Demographic changes. Growing bay area (and LA) immigrant population who care less about American football as compared to the rapidly declining percentage of Whites. Also fewer teenagers/Gen Z college age kids than the relatively greater number of Millennials. Imagine what these campuses are going to look like in the next 15-20 years when the nearly non-existent "Covid" generation approach college age?  

2) Stricter admissions standards across all four California Pac-12 schools, including USC (which used to be a safe school). Lower percentage of kids who are 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation Trojans, Bruins, Bears, or Cardinal/Indians. When mom, dad, grandpa and great grandpa attended Bama, the kids are going to Bama too. 

3) Decline in high school football participation. California impacted more than other states. That translates to less interest in attending football games in college for those kids that didn't play in high school or cheer for their high school team. 

4) Stanford in particular is snobby. Very few kids outside Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Los Altos can relate to Stanford. Stanford has done a poor job of reaching out to the greater Bay Area unlike USC which is more LA's team. And I think Stanford prefers ordinary people keep off campus.

As an aside, the giant billboard on the corner of El Camino and Embarcadero (next to the stadium) used to list the home football schedule for as long as I can remember but no more, why? That can't be good for attendance.