Mailbag: That UVA Football game was a sellout? Explain all the empties, then

I’m struggling to understand attendance reporting for UVA Football games.

1. Yesterday’s game attendance of 62,779 was reported as a sellout when there were significant seats available in the upper deck. My seats are in Section 507, and there were at least 1,000 open.
2. What’s included in the 62,779 count?  There’s an official student section, and then you have The Hill in the North endzone. How about the marching band?
3. How is student attendance recognized? Students don’t purchase tickets, and I assume they just present their student ID.

Clay

I can confirm, there were murmurs – at least one unprintable – in the press box yesterday when the 62,779 figure was announced.

I’ve asked about this in the past, and never gotten a straight answer, so I’m going to do some educated guessing.

In the events business, it’s common to use “tickets distributed” – which includes “tickets sold,” and what they call in the trade “paper,” i.e. free tickets handed out as part of various and sundry promotional efforts.

It’s known (through our reporting) that Charlottesville School families and staff were given access to up to four free tickets per taker earlier in the week as part of a papering effort on the part of UVA Athletics.

Maybe a fair number of those that were claimed by people who then didn’t show are included in the count?

I think it’s fair to assume, yes, they were.

It’s also common specific to the sports events business to count participants – operations staff, other on-site staff, like concessions and security, etc., even players, coaches and trainers, and, yes, the marching band, as attendees.

Then, unique to Scott Stadium, we can just squeeze as many students onto The Hill as don’t mind standing arm in arm.

The official capacity at Scott Stadium is 61,500; the record attendance is 64,947, for the 2008 season opener.

I didn’t get out from the press box during the game to get a gauge of the upper deck over my head and the corners, but from what I could see across from me, I can see an argument being made for there being a couple or three thousand empties, and still getting more than 61,500 into the venue.

My thinking there being, the official capacity is already an undercount, based on the fluidity of how many people can fit on The Hill.

I’m not usually one to toe the party line for UVA Athletics, so, keep that in mind.

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