ACC Football Championship Attendence

 

ACC Football Championship

In a recent post, someone suggested that allowing the #1 seed to host the ACC championship football game would help solve the ACC Championship game attendance issues. I thought this was interesting so I went and looked at the attendance records for each of the ACC championship games since the 1st game in 2005. Here is what I found (excluding the 2020 Covid game between Clemson and Notre Dame):

1) There have been 20 CCG's

2) Number of times in CCG:

Clemson - 9
FSU - 6
Va Tech - 6
Ga Tech - 4
BC - 2
Duke - 2
WF - 2
UNC - 2
Pitt - 2
UVA - 2
Miami - 1
Louisville - 1
SMU - 1
NCSU, Syracuse, Cal, Stanford - 0

3) The ACC CCG has been played in 4 different venues:

EverBank Field (Jacksonville): 3 games, 73,000 seat capacity (when played)
Raymond James (Tampa): 2 games, 75,000 seat capacity (when played)
Camping World (Orlando): 1 game, 60,000 seat capacity (when played)
Bank of America (Charlotte): 14 games, 75,000 seat capacity (when played)

4) Championship Game Attendance Averages:

When FSU has played (6 times) - 67,500 avg attendance / 90% avg capacity
When Clemson has played (9 times) - 63,500 avg attendance / 86% avg capacity
When neither FSU/Clemson has played (5 times) - 53,900 avg attendance / 77% avg capacity

5) ACC Stadiums vs ACC CCG Attendance Averages:

Only 3 teams have stadium capacities at or above the 67,500 FSU CCG average: Clemson, Pitt, FSU (Va Tech and Miami are close)

Only 5 teams have stadium capacities at or above the 63,500 Clemson CCG average: Clemson, Pitt, FSU, Va Tech, Miami (Cal, UVA, Louisville are close)

Eight ACC teams have stadium capacities below the 53,900 non FSU/Clemson CCG average: Ga Tech (close), UNC (close), Stanford (close), BC, Syracuse, SMU, Duke, Wake Forest

So .....

1) Playing the ACC CCG at 50% of the ACC home stadiums would automatically result in attendance at or lower than the historical non FSU/Clemson average (53,900).

2) Playing the ACC CCG at 70% of the ACC home stadiums would result in attendance at or below the historical FSU average (67,500).

3) Playing the ACC CCG at three of the ACC home stadiums (Duke, SMU, Wake Forest) would guarantee attendance below this years CCG attendance (41,700 / 55% capacity) which set an all time low attendance figure for the ACC CCG.