Not sure if it's by popular demand, but the Memorial Stadium Sellout Watch ticket tracker is back for another season! Below is the current status of ticket sales for the EIU game.
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Unfortunately, this is solidly below sales for Toledo in week 1 last season - about 4,200 tickets short of where the Toledo ticket tracker count ended up (46,546). With the Thursday night game and relative lack of excitement compared to last year, this is not all that unsurprising. But there are six days until gameday and a great weather forecast, perhaps announced attendance eclipses 45,000.
For those new to the Sellout Watch ticket tracker, here is a brief overview:
1. I'm weirdly obsessed with following if/when Memorial Stadium will break its streak of not having a sellout since the North Carolina game in 2016. I hardly post about anything else.
2. Using a tracker I built in Excel, I review the Illinois tickets website multiple times in the days preceding a game and estimate how many tickets have been sold.
3. The tracking process has some inherent limitations, mostly in that the status of large swaths of tickets are not publicly available. Generally the counts reported from the tracker are conservative and have trailed announced attendance by approximately 2,500.
4. Using the tracker and other situational assumptions, I typically provide an official attendance guess in the hours ahead of kickoff. Last season my guesses varied from actual attendance by an average of 843 per game (excluding the FAU game where the DIA gave away thousands of free tickets to teachers/educators).
I'll wrap up this post by making one bold prediction. I take no joy predicting this, but
the Michigan game on October 19 will not be a sellout, and it won't be particularly close. Based on what I'm seeing, there are way too many tickets available - and at a premium price point - that they simply won't have enough demand to pack the place absent the team outperforming expectations significantly in the first six weeks. That's a shame because it will be a really special day, and one that should be celebrated by the fanbase.
ABSOLUTELY by popular demand! I also love this kind of stuff (obviously, lol...), and these posts are a highlight of my week here on Loyalty before games. Please keep 'em coming, and thank you for your work!!
As far as the rest, I had a couple main thoughts for discussion.
1. This EIU guess does not surprise me, especially if you say you are often about 2,500 below the announced number due to your method being conservative. If your tracker is around 44k or so, that would put final attendance for next Thursday around 46.5k - a 5-10% decrease from what we'd expect for a Saturday crowd. Maybe we will get the point where we expect 60k every week, but it will take time!
2. It is very frustrating to me that we allow tickets to go unsold, but I understand the rationale for the DIA. As others have said, as soon as it becomes known that the DIA gives out unsold tickets, the ticket sales we DO have will decrease as people just wait for the week-of discounts. Also, others have speculated that the DIA makes more money selling 45k-50k tickets at "market price" rather than selling 55k due to severely decreased ticket prices. I have not seen the math, of course.
3. With all that said, I think we CAN sell out Michigan, but it will indeed require a good start (4 wins going into the Michigan game). I would THINK this would be the one week that the DIA would swallow its pride and/or make an exception to make sure the stands are full. You need AT LEAST 55k-56k for that whole hyped up event to not be an embarrassment, as that's the threshold where it LOOKS like a sellout. There is a very good chance that the Michigan game would be on a prime channel like FOX if we have a nice start, and they will play up the fanfare of the anniversary and the throwback vibe ... it would be humiliating to have a half-empty East Balcony.
4. I am curious what the attendance for KU will be like. If we can pull 45k or so for EIU (and can win comfortably), you would think that we'd get at least 5k more in the stands just because of (1) a more exciting opponent, (2) it being on a Saturday and (3) the night game start time. If we get over 50k in the stands vs. KU, you can at least create some atmosphere. If you get 55k or more, you start talking about an actual home field advantage.
5. For fun, this is my total guess on attendance IF we kept winning each game, starting with a base of 45k for Eastern Illinois ... it also assumes for simplicity's sake that we do not stub our toe vs. EIU or CMU.
Eastern Illinois
45,000 or so
Kansas
52,500
Central Michigan (Homecoming)
51,000 if we beat KU
49,000 if we lose to KU in a close game
47,000 if we get blown out vs. KU
--- Illini are 2-1 or 3-0 before traveling to Nebraska and PSU ---
Purdue
57,000 if we are 5-0
56,000 if we are 4-1
54,000 if we are 3-2 (i.e., we beat one of KU, Nebraska or PSU)
50,000 if we are 2-3
Michigan
50,000 if we are 2-4 (only wins are EIU and CMU)
52,000 if we are 3-3 (with wins over EIU, CMU and Purdue)
53,500 if we are 3-3 (with wins over EIU, CMU and KU/Nebraska/PSU)
56,000 if we are 4-2
60,670 if we are 5-1 or better
TL;DR ... I think we will be flirting with a sellout for the Michigan game if we can get to 4 wins AND pass the eye test. Personally, considering it would be in front of the home fans, I think beating KU would do the best to help attendance. Over the past couple of seasons under BB, a lot of our most impressive wins have been on the road, only to come home in front of a larger crowd and faceplant. As far as getting fans in the stands, beating KU is probably more important than walking into Lincoln or even Happy Valley and getting a W.