Stadium expansion and 2015 opener?

Charlotte 49er Football 🏈
521

[quote=“Mr. Bojangles, post:515, topic:28757”][quote=“SteauA, post:514, topic:28757”][quote=“Niner National, post:513, topic:28757”][quote=“SteauA, post:511, topic:28757”][quote=“jfickett, post:508, topic:28757”][quote=“49RFootballNow, post:507, topic:28757”][quote=“Gassman, post:504, topic:28757”][quote=“Nugget, post:494, topic:28757”]Charlotte Motor Speedway is reducing its seating capacity by 31%. Can any correlation be made to football? Are people less likely to buy tickets to any sporting events now? I don’t know.

CMS is removing 41,000 seats. Daytona has taken out 67,000.

http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/blog/queen_city_agenda/2014/12/tear-it-down-charlotte-track-seating.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bizj_charlotte+%28Charlotte+Business+Journal%29[/quote]

That’s an amazing reduction in attendance. But the article stated that they have a new record TV contract. Amazing that they can still get more TV money when their attendance is falling so much.

It must be the strength of live sports programming compared to other types of content.[/quote]

Well I’d assume TV money is up BECAUSE more people are watching from home and not going in person.

To get back on track, I’d think a 30,000 seat stadium for us would be the max needed. With dropping attendance nationwide there could be a lot of empty seats in 50,000 seat stadiums. It’s just too easy to watch the game from home.[/quote]

This is the awkward conundrum that we, and many programs of similar size/importance, are facing. We want to be on TV, because it helps with recruiting and legitimacy. We DONT want to be on local tv, because it makes it easy to watch from home, which kills attendance. BUT, due to our size/importance, ONLY local tv stations like WCCB are willing to pick us up for any significant number of games, save for the ASN and, in C-USA, fox sports 1 or the occasional ESPN family of networks game. It’s a bad circle for us.[/quote]

This is true but despite all of that, in our current ~15,300 seat stadium, I still believe that if we were winning a lot, a large majority of the folks watching on TV (as well as students that wouldn’t normally care) would buy tickets to games and sell out the place.

Winning = sell-outs

That formula never fails (unless if you’re Marshall apparently… the empty seats in the WKU game and C-USA title game are still a huge WTF to me).[/quote]I think 49erFootballNow pretty much nailed it, but it was like 40 degrees and raining. I’m not going to hang out in that kind of weather to watch a sporting event.[/quote]

If Charlotte was hosting the C-USA title game and it was 40 and raining you wouldn’t go to the game? Really?

Our fanbase is soft.[/quote]

I hope our stadium expansion plans include a retractable roof over the stadium. That way our fans won’t get rained on or sunburned.[/quote]

Washington has shown us the way:

522

Love Huskies’ stadium. That picture looks prior to renovations. I lived out there for a short while.

523

Any work done yet on the stadium lights?

524

I’m never 100% sure I know what I’m looking at reading these things, but I think the construction schedule gets approved on the 15th and then they start actual work, to complete by March 29th. http://facilities.uncc.edu/sites/facilities.uncc.edu/files/fields/projects/file/20141208FootballLights.pdf

525

clt says no need to put up the lights until it gets dark outside.

526

Forget about stadium expansion. “Most think it’s pretty nice the way it is”

527

I cannot think of one college football stadium that is known for being “pretty nice”. I do not think a “pretty NICE” stadium is what we actually need, but that’s just my opinion.

If you have the smallest stadium in FBS, size does matter. It can be used against us in recruiting.

528

If we ever want to get to the “NEXT LEVEL” we are going to have to get the stadium to the 30k mark. Hard to knock App when they usually have 30k per game and we struggle to get to 15k. Recruits want to play in front of larger crowds.

529

clt waits for an update form the school.

530

[quote=“cltniners, post:529, topic:28757”]clt waits for an update form the school.[/quote] Here is clt’s update:

531

This thread got bumped why? Was actually looking forward to real news when I saw this.

532

Found my own answer. Actual discussion hidden once again in the Shoutbox. No wonder visitors think this board is dead.

(20:06:27) jfickett: what is the stadium non-expansi​on talk? (20:11:43) ninerID: I made a comment to spease about GaSt and CCU making expansion moves. (20:12:07) ninerID: He responded "most think our stadium is pretty nice the way it is" (20:24:48) jfickett: glad we are content playing as a pop warner team in the smallest stadium in FBS football. (20:25:09) jfickett: If we didnt want to be FBS, we should have just stayed FCS (20:25:15) jfickett: you cant "kinda" go FBS (20:25:34) jfickett: you gotta commit full bore to spending those student fees, or just hang back in FCS and say fuk it (20:26:19) ninerID: We are at the bare minimum. That is who we are. (20:38:03) Niner_National: Lol @ spease comment (20:41:24) ninerID: Sorry. Exact quote was (20:41:39) ninerID: " we have a pretty nice stadium as is. At least most think so." (20:43:35) Niner_National: Yeah, quality wise it is nice. Nobody is debating that (20:59:11) 49r9r: "Nice Stadium" means someone does not want to try to fill a larger stadium. (21:00:16) 49r9r: if we have a winning year next year, that stadium will suddenly be too small. having seating for only 8000 or 9000 non-student​s is nothing to brag about (21:03:00) ninerID: Our stadium is large enough to not have to market (21:03:17) ninerID: Bigger stadium would just create work (21:03:45) jfickett: ^^^^^ ding ding ding
533

If JRS stays at its current capacity, we will be behind all FOUR Sunbelt programs in our primary recruiting footprint. App is already bigger. Coastal, who actually has vision, is expanding their stadium to IIIRC 24k, and it will be every bit as “nice” as ours. Ga Southern already expanded to over 20k. And as confirmed yesterday, Ga State is now officially getting Turner Field, which will be converted to a 30k stadium which will feature all of the amenities that it currently has, including lux boxes, etc.(why don’t we have boxes ??)

Georgia_State_Plan.jpg800×1105

We cannot compete being so small minded. I do not understand how our administration can be so obtuse as to willingly fall behind four Sunbelt programs, in addition to ODU, ECU, the ACC, etc that we are already behind. We are so small minded that it’s baffling. We have, ostensibly, App, Duke, and CHeat coming in… We will be able to sell a lot of tickets to all of those games. Why are we so afraid of being more than the minimum??

And what happens if we start winning? We can already fill the stadium for night conference games in anything other than a downpour. If we are playing competitive football, people are going to be mad if they can’t get tix. Once again, our leadership is reactionary instead of visionary.

One other thing - as pointed out by an ECU fan friend of mine at work. Having a tiny stadium affects the optics of our games. He is curious about being a casual fan of our football program (his 2nd team), but he hates our camera angles at games because we don’t have a proper FBS level press box that places cameras at the higher broadcasting position that fans are used to when they turn on a game at Clemson, or CHeat, or even ECU. I mention it because it is the type of thing our entire AD seems to be completely oblivious of. How our games look on TV matters. We look small time because we are designed that way.

This type of small mindedness turns my fandom towards frustration if not outright despair. I had planned on doubling my season tix sometime in the next couple of seasons, but with this type of leadership attitude, why bother? They aren’t serious about winning or being great. Why should I care?

Our official AD’s slogan should be: Minimum necessarium esse, nihil magis , because that’s how it’s run.

534

clt says we also need a bigger team store at the rich. clt feels like he is playing a carnival game when he wants to look at a 49er SnapBack hat.

535

I would like to point out that I think spease is just giving the company man response here. I think he understands the need to grow. It’s unfortunate for him he’s the only one that steps out from behind the wall at Minitrue.

Having said that…

I said this in the thread about recruiting budget. I’m done complaining about coaches here (save Tall, he was horrible).

Bobby Lutz, Alan Major, Hibbs, price, Jeff Mullen, lambert. I’m sorry for most of my complaints. It’s not fair to be as critical as I have been when the proper tools aren’t given.

College athletics is an arms race. We don’t care.

I don’t expect JRS to be Death Valley. I don’t even expect 40k in my lifetime. But for goodness sakes we shouldn’t be in GaSt and CCUs rear view mirror and we for damn sure shouldn’t be content with it.

536

App does NOT “usually” have 30K per game (they have reported 30,000+ maybe 3-4 times EVER). You need to stop believing the App hype. They averaged low to mid-20s this season (and have never averaged more than mid 20s) I believe they actually only have ~23,000+ real seats after their last expansion.

537

App does NOT “usually” have 30K per game (they have reported 30,000+ maybe 3-4 times EVER). You need to stop believing the App hype. They averaged low to mid-20s this season (and have never averaged more than mid 20s) I believe they actually only have ~23,000+ real seats after their last expansion.[/quote]

clt says you can literally just walk into the appy stadium without a ticket.

538

I am curious to see how Coastal does with attendance moving up. I believe Brooks stadium holds around 9300 currently and was designed to be expanded to 20000 which is what their plans call for. In order to move up to the FBS level they were required to make the stadium larger to maintain the 15k attendance mark. The thing that will be interesting does the increase in size correlate into increase in attendance. They have only average about 8500 a game over the past few years so it bears watching on that end.

[font=verdana][size=2px]The[/size][/font]

539

App does NOT “usually” have 30K per game (they have reported 30,000+ maybe 3-4 times EVER). You need to stop believing the App hype. They averaged low to mid-20s this season (and have never averaged more than mid 20s) I believe they actually only have ~23,000+ real seats after their last expansion.[/quote]

Kidd Brewer seating capacity is 24050. In 2007 regular season App average over 27000 but the attendance number dropped to 24000 due to hosting home playoff games throughout the FCS playoffs. At that point the stadium seating capacity was only 15750 and that season lead to the expansion on the East side of the stadium. In 2008 they average almost 29000 during the regular season and 25000 after hosting two playoff games. After this season the temporary seats were added to the endzone which pushed the capacity to close to what it is today. The 2007 and 2008 seasons were the reason for the expansion as the attendance numbers warranted it.

540

[quote=“winsel1081, post:538, topic:28757”]I am curious to see how Coastal does with attendance moving up. I believe Brooks stadium holds around 9300 currently and was designed to be expanded to 20000 which is what their plans call for. In order to move up to the FBS level they were required to make the stadium larger to maintain the 15k attendance mark. The thing that will be interesting does the increase in size correlate into increase in attendance. They have only average about 8500 a game over the past few years so it bears watching on that end.

[font=verdana][size=2px]The[/size][/font][/quote]They’ll probably be in the 12-15,000 range honestly.

They’ll get bumps in years when they have an attractive home slate. App and Ga So will definitely bring a lot of fans to their place. If we ever play there (which I’m sure we will), we’ll probably take a decent crowd too.