2019 USC attendance was way up. But how many people actually filled Williams-Brice?
South Carolina bucked a trend in 2019.
College football attendance seems to fall in the sport nationally every season, often chronicled by CBS writer Dennis Dodd. That was true last season, when “college football attendance hit a 24-year low according to the NCAA’s official numbers,” Dodd wrote.
The Gamecocks, however, were up. Way up. USC saw an average per-game increase of 4,300 in announced attendance from 2018 to 2019. That was the highest jump in the SEC and the 10th-largest gain nationally. The schedule at Williams-Brice was strong with games against Alabama and Clemson.
But those numbers don’t fully represent what’s happening. Announced attendance tracks tickets sold or given away. But that figure doesn’t account for actual bodies through the turnstiles.
Through an open records request, The State obtained the scanned ticket data for the 2019 season. That data showed an even more notable jump.
Of the announced 77,962 fans per game, there was an average of 58,116 tickets scanned in. That comes out to a scan rate of 74.6%, a solid number.
From 2014 to 2018, that number topped out at 80.75%. The low was 69.6% in 2018, in part because of a game rescheduled by a hurricane.
The best game in terms of actual tickets scanned was Alabama at 69,527, or 84.8% of the announced attendance of 81,954. That’s the best since the Clemson game in 2017.
Game; announced attendance; scanned attendance; percentage scanned
▪ Charleston Southern: announced 70,698; scanned 46,724; percent 66
▪ Alabama: announced 81,954; scanned 69,527; percent 84.9
▪ Kentucky: announced 80,828; scanned 64,245; percent 79.5
▪ Florida: announced 78,883; scanned 52,788; percent 66.9
▪ Vanderbilt: announced 71,945; scanned 51,969; percent 72.2
▪ App State: announced 80,849; scanned 56,338; percent 69.7
▪ Clemson: announced 80,580; scanned 65,574; percent 81.3
The home schedule with Alabama and Clemson was in part credited for the first gain in season ticket sales since 2014. South Carolina finished 4-8 in Will Muschamp’s fourth season.
The 2020 schedule includes Georgia at home, but Texas A&M or Tennessee rank as probably the best home game after that.
This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 7:41 AM.
